haiku stringlengths 5 2.3k | source stringlengths 1 74 |
|---|---|
a passive insistence on multiples
until that divorces itself
becomes single | img2poems |
said well here opens his sits
at its bottom
the bodies | img2poems |
the whey foam on the head
of the safest society in human
civilization | img2poems |
amnesia to people
who will actually
harm and hurt | img2poems |
my father came upon me once cross-legged on the floor
his sad smile telling me more than any detection
he took my hand and closed the door | img2poems |
i throw away my half-finished letters to him in my tiny pink wastebasket but
my aim is no good
the floor is scattered with fire hazards declarations unread | img2poems |
hockey star amp cross-country runner
who sat at my lunch table
in high school | img2poems |
jumped out of a greenwich village window
in
anne kepler | img2poems |
killed by smoke-poisoning while playing
the flute at the yonkers children's hospital
during a fire set by a year old arsonist | img2poems |
may she be refused in both heaven and hell
and wander the earth forever without rest
a hungry ghost clinging to the rocks and trees | img2poems |
it's your own
life you lean over greedy
going back for more | img2poems |
the first one means: repeating or myriad
consisting of many parts increasing in number
happening over and over without end | img2poems |
overnight a wall sprang up around him
leaving the rest of us
outside | img2poems |
that kind of speed keeps a poet accountable
he won't ever say the grass is very green
when it's only green | img2poems |
he lay still for an hour and a half
then reared up onto his rickety legs
like a newborn calf | img2poems |
the anthology of love poems i bought
for a quarter is brittle anyway and comes
apart when i read it | img2poems |
one at a time i throw pages on the fire
and watch smoke make its way up
and out | img2poems |
i put on my blue jacket and join them
the children stand with their mouths
open | img2poems |
all that is beautiful from which i choose
even artifice which i hold above nature
won't salve these stuttered accoutrements | img2poems |
one hand said i will go where you go
while the other hand continued
on alone | img2poems |
outside there's a world where every love scene
begins with a man in a doorway
he walks over to the woman and says open your mouth | img2poems |
the heist gang dons clown masks and
sherry will betray george and johnny can't love fay
and the fortune in the suitcase just blows away | img2poems |
bartender make it straight and make it three
one for the negro
one for you and me | img2poems |
nearer the ground than townsend's solitaire
doctor nkomo
raked his hair | img2poems |
this is just one of the things
i noticed about my thoughts
as they passed easefully by | img2poems |
their clothes no longer fit
it was this that brought them
to me crying their faces twitching | img2poems |
replies the frail
and faithful heart
it's not for sale | img2poems |
last night in bed
i mouthed a prayer
of my own composition | img2poems |
the pen is no mightier than the soul
never underestimate the nib of corruption
better late than suffer the long introduction | img2poems |
we drop the shadows where they are then
return to them
when the light has grown heavy | img2poems |
we've never been too sure that we exist as the earth does
we're most at home in water
that soaks up the letters in our brains | img2poems |
the cool expiring slowly in the high-ceilinged room
while a pinned-up psyops leaflet declares
if you sleep in a cemetery you're bound to have nightmares | img2poems |
a big hard-working hand anybody's
to come medicinally down antibody
to the slow infection of her western face | img2poems |
but time outbids all comers and we die
expensively in princess margaret
who was herself once so beautiful | img2poems |
approach life as if it were a banquet
your rightful portion averts your ireful potion
caress what can't be blessed cup shadows under breasts | img2poems |
let pass what's out of ken: lover job riches
a ripe peach
until it reaches you | img2poems |
but had my belief in the fiction not been thus buoyed up
i might in the sigh and strike of the next night's bombs
have realized a little what they meant and for the first time been afraid | img2poems |
sometimes you say something like even so boo
and it sounds like breathe darling
that's why this one's for you | img2poems |
of lightning splits the sky
and a hammer of thunder pounds the earth
and the eagles and panthers cry | img2poems |
only the fort remains near forty feet high
round unfinished half open to the sky
the elements wind rain god's deliberate eye | img2poems |
i began to raise my head and noticed
for the first time the bunting
red white and blue hung out for the parade | img2poems |
would you move just one inch over
there
the light was in my eye | img2poems |
here is the photographer and his party
exploring the great canyons of the west
while their clothes dry on the line | img2poems |
look for me under the hood
of that old chevrolet settled in weeds
at the end of the pasture | img2poems |
i'm the radiator that spent its years
bolted in front of an engine
shoving me forward into the wind | img2poems |
that which made abraham bare the priestly knife
and isaac kneel or that young hebrew girl
who sought her father coming from the strife | img2poems |
soldiers we must fight and save
freedom now and give our foes
all their country should a grave | img2poems |
house
the apple trees have taken over the sky
sequestered the gate sidled over the porch | img2poems |
lit on the table the dried twigs
the autumn leaves in the blue chinese vase
thanks for the faces our faces in this low light | img2poems |
this keeps the focus where it wants to be
on whom you ask
invariably on | img2poems |
i didn't even have to say did i
i love you so much
no need to reply | img2poems |
how my hardscrabble prayer
in it's dove's arc
was answered | img2poems |
where'd you get that voice
refusing to come
to a particular point castration finally made sense | img2poems |
the entries there make no mention of hell
which was sifted through the vale of tears amp fell
to make earth amp the base of this hill where i sunbathe amp murmur | img2poems |
shut up be like a compass
the king
has erased your name from the book of speech | img2poems |
i'm done
speak to me soul's soul's soul
from desire of whom from whose desire every throat was cut | img2poems |
toward what we knew and did not know
we knew in the spreading twilight
that returns changed to a changed place | img2poems |
i thought we were playing a game
in a forest that day
i ran as my mother chased me | img2poems |
over the courses i travel from now on
what's that whisper
just the delicate sweeping away of somebody's life | img2poems |
we're dear blood daughters to this every hag and near kin
to any after this of those our mirrors tell us foolishly envy us
presuming us who are young to be beautiful kind and sure | img2poems |
blood from a kitchen fresco in thick amber strokes
blood from the baby's right ear from his ochre nose
what blood is this | img2poems |
it is blood time sir terminator says
it is blood time sir simpson winks
it is blood time sir mcveigh weighs | img2poems |
blood on the wheel blood on the reel
bronze dead gold amp diamond deep
blood be fast | img2poems |
amp all the while we found love in unlikely places: in
the ravaged church of our bodies amp our faces
refracted in their long faces | img2poems |
amp at three he told me at my age he had red hair amp broke his neck falling off
a runaway horse i know
the rocking chair's set too close to the edge of the porch | img2poems |
more than anything
when i speak of
the darkness i mean this living | img2poems |
back then we slept watched tv
we were the dogs
by the time the screen door slammed we were gone | img2poems |
to move the limbs of the body
to speak intelligible words
these things promise change | img2poems |
away so that i could always hold this concise image
of before that time and it
floods my memory | img2poems |
they eat of me
of small and blemished apples in low fields of me
whose rocky streams and droughts i do not drink | img2poems |
like a perfume
that does not choose the direction it travels
that cannot be straight or crooked kept out or kept | img2poems |
gauley bridge is a good town for negroes they let us stand around they let us stand
around on the sidewalks if we're black or brown
vanetta's over the trestle and that's our town | img2poems |
the hill makes breathing slow slow breathing after your row the river
and the graveyard's on the hill cold in the springtime blow
the graveyard's up on high and the town is down below | img2poems |
did you ever bury thirty-five men in a place in back of your house
thirty-five tunnel workers the doctors didn't attend
died in the tunnel camps under rocks everywhere world without end | img2poems |
when a man said i feel poorly for any reason any weakness or such
letting up when he couldn't keep going barely
the cap and company come and run him off the job surely | img2poems |
when the blast went off the boss would call out come let's go back
when that heavy loaded blast went white come let's go back
telling us hurry hurry into the falling rocks and muck | img2poems |
as dark as i am when i came out at morning after the tunnel at night
with a white man nobody could have told which man was white
the dust had covered us both and the dust was white | img2poems |
instead i walk around in children's clothes
shorts and a t-shirt with the name of a band
lettered on the front announcing me to nobody | img2poems |
like a boardinghouse table
men on one side women on the other
nobody planned it | img2poems |
a man and a woman are like those rivers
entering a larger sea
greater than the sum of all its parts | img2poems |
in the bathroom crayoned
graffiti
fuck the | img2poems |
stand still and silent
pray
return | img2poems |
with regards to your husband i am as
ever your loving father
frederick douglass | img2poems |
full of light and music the beating air
light like a bird calvino says not a feather
over the water the shags come in to land | img2poems |
though once there were many of my kind
flocking inland or perhaps
it felt that way | img2poems |
then laughs
it's okay kiddo
long as you're here you're one of us | img2poems |
and things: a wishbone ring whatever i crave
the heart-hollows the cannot-do-withouts the whens
and whos the frayed veils between death and here | img2poems |
love
a
minor | img2poems |
i could make a wardrobe
with tufts of wool
caught on thistle and bracken | img2poems |
down in minutes
within the month
an island silted up behind | img2poems |
glove over glove let your dance express
what i've been creeping like a vein of sweat
through a vastness of | img2poems |
hunger
is like the inside
biting you | img2poems |
i don't know when i stopped believing in heaven
or if i do
maybe i just stopped receiving heaven | img2poems |
we married in september
everyone was still
wearing their summer shirts sleeves of heaven | img2poems |
it was white there was a bend and the car
spun
it was then i prayed pleading with heaven | img2poems |
when he goes limp lie him down on the gurney
mom
oxygen mask breathing heaven | img2poems |
he loves the colors of planets
i teach him
their lifelessness: beautiful deceiving heaven | img2poems |
my drawing teacher said: look think make a mark
look i told myself
and waited to be marked | img2poems |
but loss is a precious stone to me a nectar
distilled in time preaching the truth of winter
to the fallen heart that does not cease to fall | img2poems |
mother and father
forgive me my absence
i will always be moving quietly toward you | img2poems |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.