PAPER POEMS

If I Should Learn, In Some Quite Casual Way

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again-
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
.....

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Interim

The room is full of you!-As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!-
.....

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Remembrance To Forget

at the edge of a branch
i once slipped off,
an invisible noose
held on to the remains
.....

Ekta Somera

Poetry

Poetry is a painting of words,
The colours are our tears and thoughts,
That flow from the mind to the pen in hand and onto the paper.
The different figure of speech and tone used in poetry enhances its texture.
.....

Salma Hatim

I Don't Want You To Read My Poems And Remain The Same

I don't want you to read my poems and remain the same,
i want you to read my poems and get rabbies,
attacking every jack and jill smoking cannabis
i want you to read my poems and wonder if Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was true,
.....

Francis Ngwenya

Freedom's Plow

When a man starts out with nothing,
When a man starts out with his hands
Empty, but clean,
When a man starts to build a world,
.....

Langston Hughes

What I Miss

I miss the taste of wine,
Cakes with cherries on top.
I miss the dust on a line
Which never seemed enough.
.....

Az Mo

Looking Above

So I try to assemble my thoughts on a piece of paper
There are so many and so much
One can be discussed, and the rest maybe later .
Struggling in life to have job
.....

Deoshri Chauhan

Canto Xlv

With Usura

With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
.....

Ezra Pound

Forest Fire

Of late I have begun to feel a hunger
To take in with greed, like a forest fire that
Consumes and with each killing gains a wilder,
Brighter charm, all that comes my way. Bald child in
.....

Kamala Das

A Dangling Hope

Seconds after seconds
Minutes turns hours
Hours clock months
Months birth years
.....

Ola Olawale

Gray Room

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
.....

Wallace Stevens

Dear Mama

Mama, Our teacher taught us A to Z
And Papa bought me a pen and paper
And our letter to you, papa's and mine
I write as my first test of writing
.....

Lewis Wamwanda

Thoughtful Reflection

Bright as crystal,
Shining like anew,
Readily contained,
Emotions approach,
.....

Casey Ginindza

Cultural Exchange

In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doors are doors of paper
Dust of dingy atoms
Blows a scratchy sound.
.....

Langston Hughes

Cleared

(In Memory of a Commission)

Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
Help for an honourable clan sore trampled in the dirt!
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Letter To Maria Gisborne

The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Parliament Hill Fields

ale as china
The round sky goes on minding its business.
Your absence is inconspicuous;
Nobody can tell what I lack.
.....

Sylvia Plath

Canvas

Possibly there are an infinite possibility
to paint it my way, thoughts increasing to
a point beyond the limit, defying probabilities
Ideas in proximity I've got stability, also a piece of paper in peace with the moves of my pen
.....

Itz Abusedink

Hyla Brook

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
.....

Robert Frost

Trouvée

Oh, why should a hen
have been run over
on West 4th Street
in the middle of summer?
.....

Elizabeth Bishop

In White

A dented spider like a snow drop white
On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth -
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight? -
.....

Robert Frost

The Italian In England

That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds through the countryside,
.....

Robert Browning

The Jumblies

I

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
.....

Edward Lear

How We Drove The Trotter

Oh, he was a handsome trotter, and he couldn't be completer,
He had such a splendid action and he trotted to this metre,
Such a pace and such a courage, such a record-killing power,
That he did his mile in two-fifteen, his twenty in the hour.
.....

William Thomas Goodge

The Hunting Of The Snark

Dedication

Inscribed to a dear Child:
in memory of golden summer hours
.....

Lewis Carroll

A Mediocre Man

I'm just a mediocre man
Of no high-brow pretence;
A comfortable life I plan
With care and commonsense.
.....

Robert Service

Light Loss

â??Our loss was light,â? the paper said,
â??Compared with damage to the Hunâ?:
She was a widow, and she read
One name upon the list of dead
.....

John Le Gay Brereton

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07/M/378/ This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
.....

W. H. Auden

Her Letter

I'm sitting alone by the fire,
Dressed just as I came from the dance,
In a robe even YOU would admire,-
It cost a cool thousand in France;
.....

Bret Harte

Over The Darkened City

Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
.....

Conrad Potter Aiken

In The Public Library

Standing on tiptoe, head back, eyes and arm
Upraised, Kate groped to reach the higher shelf.
Her sleeve slid up like darkness in alarm
At gleam of dawn. Impatient with herself
.....

Lesbia Harford

On Ink

I am jet black, as you may see,
The son of pitch and gloomy night:
Yet all that know me will agree,
I'm dead except I live in light.
.....

Jonathan Swift

Prejudice

IN yonder red-brick mansion, tight and square,
Just at the town's commencement, lives the mayor.
Some yards of shining gravel, fenced with box,
Lead to the painted portal--where one knocks :
.....

Jane Taylor

The Fudges In England. Letter Vii. From Miss Fanny Fudge, To Her Cousin, Miss Kitty ----.

IRREGULAR ODE.

Bring me the slumbering souls of flowers,
While yet, beneath some northern sky,
.....

Thomas Moore

With Penne, Inke, And Paper To A Distressed Friend

Here is paper, pen, and inke,
That your heart and seale may sinke
Into such markes as may expresse
A Soule much blest in heavinesse.
.....

William Strode

The Wild Knight

A dark manor-house shuttered and unlighted, outlined against a pale
sunset: in front a large, but neglected, garden. To the right, in the
foreground, the porch of a chapel, with coloured windows lighted. Hymns
within.
.....

G. K. Chesterton

The Ballad Of Salvation Bill

'Twas in the bleary middle of the hard-boiled Arctic night,
I was lonesome as a loon, so if you can,
Imagine my emotions of amazement and delight
When I bumped into that Missionary Man.
.....

Robert Service

Sonnet 038: How Can My Muse Want Subject To Invent

How can my Muse want subject to invent
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
.....

William Shakespeare

Thousand Star Hotel, Hanoi

I.

Over the road from the three star Galaxy Hotel is our hotel,
the old park on Phan Dinh Phung Street,
.....

S. K. Kelen

The Term

A rumpled sheet
Of brown paper
About the length

.....

William Carlos Williams

Old Japan

In old Japan, by creek and bay,
The blue plum-blossoms blow,
Where birds with sea-blue plumage gay
Through sea-blue branches go:
.....

Alfred Noyes

Aims At Happiness

HOW oft has sounded whip and wheel,
How oft is buckled spur to heel,
How many a steed in short relay
Stands harnessed on the king's highway,
.....

Jane Taylor

Try To Remember Some Details

Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing
of the one you love
so that on the day of loss you'll be able to say: last seen
wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat.
.....

Yehuda Amichai

The Space Coast

Florida

An Airedale rolling through green frost,
cabbage palms pointing their accusing leaves
.....

Deborah Ager

The Song Of The Soldier-born

Give me the scorn of the stars and a peak defiant;
Wail of the pines and a wind with the shout of a giant;
Night and a trail unknown and a heart reliant.

.....

Robert Service

On Receipt Of My Mother's Picture

Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine-thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
.....

William Cowper

A Beautiful Young Nymph Going To Bed

Corinna, Pride of Drury-Lane,
For whom no Shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent Garden boast
So bright a batter'd, strolling Toast;
.....

Jonathan Swift

Books Written On The Road

ocean wave moving across sail crape rays
sun glimmering sea rail sunset, campfire
beach street revolutionary figures, walk
taken along the sand, somewhere between
.....

Joseph Mayo Wristen

Oh, That 'twere Possible!

With apologies to Lord Tennyson.

(”The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike
their roots deep in the order of nature. It runs counter to human
.....

Alice Duer Miller