Post your favorite short poem....

[caty]

Mine is one I remember from the old "Laverne and Shirley" show.

If in heaven we don't meet
Hand and hand we'll brave the heat
If by chance it gets too hot
Pepsi Cola hits the spot

[Richardo]

1. The Ant

The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.

So what? Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?

-Ogden Nash

[Common Sense Party]

18. The trouble with a kitten is that

Eventually it becomes a cat.




--My favorite Ogden Nash poem.

[tuckessee]

2. I remember this one from grade school.

A sailor went to sea
to see what he could see,
But all that he could see
was sea, sea, sea.

[0007]

4. A salilor went to sea and got sucked off by a wave . . .

[redqueen]

3. How short?

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolutions power,
I might be driven to sell you love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

[1gobluedem]

5. This is the only one I can remember, apologies if it isn't exactly correct

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night.
But, ah my foes and oh, my friends
It leaves a lovely light!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

[caty]

6. Here's one for cat lovers.....

Cats sleep
Anywhere
Any table
Any chair
Top of piano
Window ledge
In the middle
On the Edge
Open drawer
Empty shoe
Anybody's
Lap will do
Fitted in
A cardboard box
In a cupboard
With your frocks
Anywhere
They don't care
Cats sleep
Anywhere.

[radfringe]

7. ok

I can drive anyway I pleases
I'm protected by my plastic Jesus

[mitchum]

8. This one by me...

Spalding Gray
Went away

[trackfan]

9. Most passionate love-poem:

Qualis nox fuit illa di deaeque;
quam mollis toris. Haesimus calentes
et transfudimus hinc et hinc labellis
errantes animas. Valete curae
mortales; ego sic perire coepi.

Petronius

What a night that was, O gods and goddesses; what a soft bed.
We clung together, burning, and with lips here and there exchanged
our wandering souls. Farewell mortal cares; thus I began to perish.

[SteppingRazor]

10. I don't really have a favorite, but here's a four-liner:

A Challenge To The Dark

shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ass
shot like a flower in the dance
-- Charles Bukowski

[Aristus]

11. One from Kenneth Patchen. it runs in its entirety:

"Come now, my child. If we were planning to harm you, do you think we would be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest?"

[XemaSab]

12. From "The Hill Wife" by Robert Frost

The Oft-Repeated Dream

She had no saying dark enough
For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the window-latch
Of the room where they slept.

The tireless but ineffectual hands
That with every futile pass
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
Before the mystery of glass!

It never had been inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream
Of what the tree might do.

[VLC]

13. 3 favorites

1. by political prisoner Nazim Hikmet

The best sea has yet to be crossed.
The best child has yet to grow up.
Our best days have yet to be lived ;
and the best word I wanted to say to you
is the word I have not yet said.

2. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
(not posting because it's pretty well known)

3. Funeral Blues by WH Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

[XemaSab]

27. Reminds me of this one...

The Emperor of Ice-Cream, by Wallace Stevens


Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

[VLC]

34. I can see why!!

[Glorfindel]

14. "The Modern Hiawatha"

He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the inside skin side outside.
He, to get the cold side outside,
Put the warm side fur side inside.
That's why he put the fur side inside,
Why he put the skin side outside,
Why he turned them inside outside.

-- George A. Strong

[Felix Mala]

15. Happens to be Frank O'Hara's last poem... It was found jotted onto a slip

of paper in the pocket of his pants at the emergency room where he was taken after being hit by a dune buggy as he strolled along a beach on Fire Island.


He falls; but even in falling
he is higher than those who
fly into the ordinary sun.

[stuntcat]

16. a Dorothy Parker one

well it's not my favorite but it's a funny one

Comment
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

[Aristus]

21. Another laugher from Dorothy Parker:

I love a nice, dry Martini;
Only one or two at the most
Three, and I'm under the table,
Four, and I'm under the host


:rofl:

[stuntcat]

32. I like,

"They say of me, and so they should,
It's doubtful if I come to good."
:D

Morbid little rhyme, I use it for my signature :headbang:

[cloudbase]

17. Candy is dandy

but liquor is quicker.

[MrCoffee]

19. .

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

[Maraya1969]

20. The monkey wrapped his head around the flag pole

to see his asshole.


(Forgot the rest)

[GOPisEvil]

22. Robert Francis' "The Pitcher" - perfect for the baseball playoffs

His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,

His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.

The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.

Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.

Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.

[Oeditpus Rex]

30. On that note...

How dear to my heart was the old-fashioned batter
who scattered line drives from the spring to the fall

He did not resemble the up-to-date batter
who swings from the heels and misses the ball

The up-to-date batter I'm not very strong for
He shatters the ozone with all of his might

And that is the reason I hanker and long for
those who doubled to left, and tripled to right

The old-fashioned batter
The eagle-eyed batter
The thinking man's batter
Who tripled to right



And...



How dear to my heart was the old-fashioned hurler
who labored all day on the old village green

He did not resemble the up-to-date twirler
who pitches four innings and ducks from the scene

The up-to-date twirler I’m not very strong for
He has a queer habit of pulling up lame

And that is the reason I hanker and long for
the pitcher who started and finished the game

The old-fashioned pitcher
The iron-armed pitcher
The stout-hearted pitcher
Who finished the game



—George Phair

[GOPisEvil]

31. I like those.

:thumbsup:

[sarge43]

23. Eternity, Wm Blake

He who bends to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.

and

Limerick, author unknown

There was a bishop of High Havery
Who had a vice most unsavory.
With maniacal howls
He'd roger young owls
In his secret underground aviary.

[begin_within]

24. "Ring of Bone" by Lew Welch

I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

and then heard
"ring of bone" where
ring is what a

bell does

[begin_within]

25. "Fog" by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

[RetroLounge]

26. Appolinaire

The Owl

My poor heart’s an owl
One nails, unnails, renails.
Of blood, of ardour, he’s the fowl.
I praise those who love me.

RL

[hellbound-liberal]

28. Here's one from William Carlos Williams.. I'm surprised it hasn't been posted yet!

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-- William Carlos Williams

[GoddessOfGuinness]

29. Fleas

Adam
Had 'em.

-Ogden Nash

[nytemare]

33. "Music when soft voices die" Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory,
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.