haiku stringlengths 5 2.3k | source stringlengths 1 74 |
|---|---|
expect society to be defective
then weep when you find that it is far
more defective than you imagined | img2poems |
meditate on the spiritual
then go a little further if you feel like it
what is out there | img2poems |
forgive your country every once in a while
if that is not possible go
to another one | img2poems |
appreciate simple pleasures such as the pleasure of chewing the
pleasure of warm water running down your back the pleasure of a
cool breeze the pleasure of falling asleep | img2poems |
be calm in a crisis
the more critical the situation the calmer you
should be | img2poems |
enjoy sex but don't become obsessed with it
except for brief periods
in your adolescence youth middle age and old age | img2poems |
answer letters promptly
use attractive stamps like the one with a
tornado on it | img2poems |
remember beauty which exists and truth which does not
notice
that the idea of truth is just as powerful as the idea of beauty | img2poems |
visit friends and acquaintances in the hospital
when you feel it is
time to leave do so | img2poems |
drink plenty of water
when asked what you would like to drink
say water please | img2poems |
see shadow puppet plays and imagine that you are one of the
characters
or all of them | img2poems |
now i flail
the wrong item creaks up
on the mental dumbwaiter | img2poems |
the impossibile replication of weight
versus time
how it will never mean what you want | img2poems |
everywhere is k-town everywhere is armeniatown
everywhere a little italy
less confederacy | img2poems |
in my california free sounds and free touch
free questions free answers
free songs from parents and poets those hopeful bodies of light | img2poems |
the storm
turns off
the lights | img2poems |
the lightning
lights the whereabouts
of the flashlight | img2poems |
the flashlight
takes us to matches
and candles the oil lamp | img2poems |
now we're back
revisiting
the th century | img2poems |
when i was green and blossomed in the spring
i was mute wood
now i am dead i sing | img2poems |
he went to the very end
he counted not the cost
what he believed he did | img2poems |
iv
the epilogue
with him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed | img2poems |
second aunt said it was more realistic this way
god not in heaven
but in exile | img2poems |
me that
had a
weed in it | img2poems |
here is the spot where she found human bones in the well
of her childhood home and how her mother told her
don't be afraid because it was not the work of wild animals | img2poems |
god said men have forgotten me
the souls that sleep shall wake again
and blinded eyes must learn to see | img2poems |
miracle of the children the brilliant
children the word
liquid as woodlands children | img2poems |
there were five
dropt dead beside me in the trench and three
whispered their dying messages to me | img2poems |
there where five
dropt dead beside me in the trench and three
whispered their dying messages to me | img2poems |
a fox scat with hair and a tooth in it
a shellmound
a bone flake in a streambank | img2poems |
sometimes i sit in my blue chair trying to remember
what it was like in the spring of
before the burning coal entered my life | img2poems |
bestow the sacrament
their sins are not well known
ours to the four winds of the earth are blown | img2poems |
no one kneads us again out of earth and clay
no one incants our dust
no one | img2poems |
a short life and a merry one my buck
we used to say we'd hate to live dead-old
yet now | img2poems |
when i had no eyes i listened
when i had no ears i thought
when i had no thought i waited | img2poems |
while looking into every busy whore's and huckster's face
as they drive their bargains is the face
of god: and some young piteous murdered face | img2poems |
groping along the tunnel step by step
he winked his prying torch with patching glare
from side to side and sniffed the unwholesome air | img2poems |
why you can hear the guns
hark
thud thud thud quite soft | img2poems |
something is diffused
in whatever world he comes again
there will be women like us who choose to | img2poems |
an officer came blundering down the trench
stand-to and man the fire step
on he went | img2poems |
down and down and down he sank and drowned
bleeding to death
the counter-attack had failed | img2poems |
there we would go my friend of friends and i
and snatch long moments from the grudging wars
whose dark made light intense to see them by | img2poems |
the staff is working with its brains
while we are sitting in the trench
the staff the universe ordains | img2poems |
such such is death: no triumph: no defeat
only an empty pail a slate rubbed clean
a merciful putting away of what has been | img2poems |
mz n wondered
went home
and discovered a new octave | img2poems |
this was another example
of mz n bringing up topics
that went nowhere | img2poems |
we pile rocks on terracing love
carry the pithy cloth
to cover the hearths of our mother | img2poems |
my shores reeled and rolled
to the world's end where they say
at the world's end the graves are green | img2poems |
sick of being decent he craves another
crash
what reaches him except disaster | img2poems |
we look for new homes every day
for new altars we strive to rebuild
the old shrines defiled by the weaver's excrement | img2poems |
the more he talked the more she burned
and sighed and tossed and groaned and turned
at last i wish said she my dear | img2poems |
from cobwebs ghosts sift through floorboards
and the homeless sleep in compost steeping like tea bags
pungent from the leaves' damp weight | img2poems |
could mean both things: i'd do
nothing i'd promised not to
also there is nothing i'll forget | img2poems |
which is only the sound
of a word for wind
then only the sound of wind | img2poems |
a certain kindness to that hill its slope gone gaily green against the eve and oh the tail dipped the string slipped
uppity huff and drag of hawk air plundering eggs in the sparrow's nest
you left this fragment this bit of shell behind | img2poems |
like trash along the riverbank chafing at the quay
plastic bottles a torn shirt fractured dolls
through which the current chortles an intimate tune | img2poems |
a grey sky trawls its silver wires of rain
these are the subtleties of the noon sea
lime emerald lilac cobalt ultramarine | img2poems |
when i press summer dusks together it is
a month of street accordions and sprinklers
laying the dust small shadows running from me | img2poems |
there is the hudson like the sea aflame
i would undress you in the summer heat
and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came | img2poems |
and cries from a swallow
remind us one swallow
doesn't make a summer | img2poems |
i admire her but wish she wouldn't idolize
the one who bullies her
i once did that | img2poems |
the old man sipping coffee
in st
-lazare who reminds you of someone | img2poems |
colonel shaw
is riding on his bubble
he waits | img2poems |
up above his painted ceiling
baby mouse's skeleton
crumbles in the mouse's trap | img2poems |
clinging to my fingers only
pain like glitter bits adhering
when i touch the shining crumbs | img2poems |
from undergrowth amp over odd birds call
and who would starv'd so survive
god save the king | img2poems |
so the particular judgement might be set
bare wallstead and a cold hearth rained into
bright puddle where the soul-free cloud-life roams | img2poems |
and after the commanded journey what
nothing magnificent nothing unknown
a gazing out from far away alone | img2poems |
touch the crossbeam drive iron in a wall
hang a line to verify the plumb
from lintel coping-stone and chimney-breast | img2poems |
relocate the bedrock in the threshold
take squarings from the recessed gable pane
make your study the unregarded floor | img2poems |
the annals say: when the monks of clonmacnoise
were all at prayers inside the oratory
a ship appeared above them in the air | img2poems |
open now as the eye of heaven was then
above three sisters talking talking steady
in a boat the ground still falls and falls from under | img2poems |
fathomableness ultimate
stony up-againstness: could you reconcile
what was diaphanous there with what was massive | img2poems |
a phenomenal instant when the spirit flares
with pure exhilaration before death
the good thief in us harking to the promise | img2poems |
she taught me what her uncle once taught her
how easily the biggest coal block split
if you got the grain and hammer angled right | img2poems |
don't reach
don't point
don't make noise when you stir | img2poems |
on cuban farms even death
can turn into
music | img2poems |
his instep has shrunk
cold as a swan's foot
or a wet swamp root | img2poems |
think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
like a dog looking for a place to sleep in
listen to it growling | img2poems |
think of the boulevard and the little palm trees
all stuck in rows suddenly revealed
as fistfuls of limp fish-skeletons | img2poems |
now the storm goes away again in a series
of small badly lit battle-scenes
each in another part of the field | img2poems |
think of someone sleeping in the bottom of a row-boat
tied to a mangrove root or the pile of a bridge
think of him as uninjured barely disturbed | img2poems |
i sat all morning in the college sick bay
counting bells knelling classes to a close
at two o'clock our neighbours drove me home | img2poems |
in the porch i met my father crying
he had always taken funerals in his stride
and big jim evans saying it was a hard blow | img2poems |
in my california kindergarten class
the teacher scolds me: real trees
don't look like that | img2poems |
they have never seen
the dancing plants
of cuba | img2poems |
i made that
i killed that
i | img2poems |
this should be memorable
legs whited out
the runners advance | img2poems |
their slaves from centuries back
were still black and their queen
was in english exile | img2poems |
it's not my grace that keeps me erect
as the sidewalk clatters downhill
under my rollerskate wheels | img2poems |
pried her mouth open and spit in it
we pass these things on
probably because we are what we can imagine | img2poems |
whatever we wanted whenever as in the fairy tale
on the beach
at marazion the surf is spangled with mackerel scales | img2poems |
the feather on the egg is the horse under the bed
the new england winter is still raw and long
the summer is intense and abandoned | img2poems |
so come on to hell with it let's go eat weeds
eat the flesh and fruit of our stupid
tears and moans of our pickled melancholy souls | img2poems |
of silences that pouring through my head
surround roaring barking human muttering
is any of that what being sounds like | img2poems |
or is it just animal gasping like what
jesus must have heard from the thieves
hanging beside him one damned one saved | img2poems |
what was in his heart when his vision
clarified and he saw it was a hand he
recognized that the nail was driving through | img2poems |
down in the basement jacked on kimbo
i'm screwdriving chunks of oxiclean
into the washer | img2poems |
a diaphanous fog of adjectives overcomes me
jane says: i can't believe you said that in alabama
nothing stands in the way of my recklessness | img2poems |
feeling filthy no matter the shift
or stiffness in the bones creaking
like the wooden stairs he climbed | img2poems |
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