1. Tom Beatty - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 483 times on American Poems.

I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney
Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,
For I tried the rights of property,
Although by lamp-light, for thirty years,
In that poker room in the opera house.
And I say to you that Life's a gambler
Head and... (Read full poem)

This poem has a door, a locked door, 
and curtains drawn against the day, 
but at night the lights come on, one 
in each room, and the neighbors swear 
they hear music and the sound of dancing. 
These days the neighbors will swear 
to anything, but... (Read full poem)

3. I Go Back To The House For A Book - written by Billy Collins
Read 2610 times on American Poems.

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a... (Read full poem)

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
and I go to bed,
I pull the covers to... (Read full poem)

5. My Picture-Gallery. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 4696 times on American Poems.

IN a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix’d house, 
It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other; 
Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories? 
Here the tableaus of life, and here... (Read full poem)

Where a faint light shines alone, 
Dwells a Demon I have known. 
Most of you had better say 
"The Dark House," and go your way. 
Do not wonder if I stay.

For I know the Demon's eyes 
And their lure that never dies. 
Banish all your fond... (Read full poem)

7. The Writer - written by Richard Wilbur
From The Mind-Reader. Published in 1976. Read 7548 times on American Poems.

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
>From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a... (Read full poem)

I. LONELINESS

	Her Word

One ought not to have to care
   So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
   To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back
   With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we... (Read full poem)

9. The Player Piano - written by Randall Jarrell
Read 1435 times on American Poems.

I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House
Run by a lady my age. She was gay.
When I told her that I came from Pasadena
She laughed and said, "I lived in Pasadena
When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus."

I felt that I had met someone from... (Read full poem)

1
Only today and just for this minute,
when the sunslant finds its true angle,
you can see yellow and pinkish leaves spangle
our gentle, fluffy tree—
suddenly the green summer is momentary...
Autumn is my favorite season—
why does it... (Read full poem)

11. I was the slightest in the House - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1700 times on American Poems.

I was the slightest in the House --
I took the smallest Room --
At night, my little Lamp, and Book --
And one Geranium --

So stationed I could catch the Mint
That never ceased to fall --
And just my Basket --
Let me think -- I'm sure --
That this... (Read full poem)

Up in a dirty window in a dark room is a star 
which an old man can see. He looks at it. He can 
see it. It is the star of the room; an electrical 
freckle that has fallen out of his head and gotten 
stuck in the dirt on the window.

  He thinks he... (Read full poem)

13. Hamlet Micure - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 788 times on American Poems.

In a lingering fever many visions come to you:
I was in the little house again
With its great yard of clover
Running down to the board-fence,
Shadowed by the oak tree,
Where we children had our swing.
Yet the little house was a manor hall
Set... (Read full poem)

ON Forty First Street
near Eighth Avenue
a frame house wobbles.
  
If houses went on crutches
this house would be
one of the cripples.
  
A sign on the house:
Church of the Living God
And Rescue Home for Orphan Children.
  
From a Greek coffee... (Read full poem)

15. The Visitor - written by Kate Northrop
From Back Through Interruption. Published in 2002. Read 309 times on American Poems.

Down the hill, in the field of sweet alfalfa, they're
     freezing each other, the children

playing tag and I'm up at the house, I'm
in the picture window, thin
and distant like the glimpse

of a surfacing fish. What dark waters
the house is,... (Read full poem)

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for 
a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with... (Read full poem)

17. The Having To Love Something Else - written by Russell Edson
Read 1194 times on American Poems.

There was a man who would marry his mother, and asked his
father for his mother's hand in marriage, and was told he could
not marry  his mother's hand because it was attached to all
the rest of mother, which was all married to his father; that
he'd... (Read full poem)

A rhyme of good Death's inn!
   My love came to that door;
And she had need of many things,
   The way had been so sore.

My love she lifted up her head,
   "And is there room?" said she;
"There was no room in Bethlehem's inn
   For... (Read full poem)

19. Poem For My 43rd Birthday - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 2874 times on American Poems.

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room. 
...in the morning
they're out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys,... (Read full poem)

Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.

How fair on looking back, the Day
We sauntered from the Door --
Unconscious our returning,
But discover it no more.(Read full poem)

21. The Defective Record - written by William Carlos Williams
From The Complete Collected Poems 1906-1938. Published in 1938. Read 2211 times on American Poems.

Cut the bank for the fill.
Dump sand
pumped out of the river
into the old swale

killing whatever was
there before—including
even the muskrats. Who did it?
There's the guy.

Him in the blue shirt and
turquoise skullcap.
Level it down
for him... (Read full poem)

(For Aline)

When you shall die and to the sky
Serenely, delicately go,
Saint Peter, when he sees you there,
Will clash his keys and say:
"Now talk to her, Sir Christopher!
And hurry, Michelangelo!
She wants to play at building,
And you've... (Read full poem)

23. Felix Schmidt - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 387 times on American Poems.

It was only a little house of two rooms --
Almost like a child's play-house --
With scarce five acres of ground around it;
And I had so many children to feed
And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick
From bearing children.
One day lawyer... (Read full poem)

The house grows sick in its dining room and begins to vomit.
  Father cries, the dining room is vomiting.
  No wonder, the way you eat, it's enough to make anybody sick,
says his wife.
  What shall we do? What shall we do? he cries.
  Call the Vomit... (Read full poem)

25. Talking to Grief - written by Denise Levertov
Read 2601 times on American Poems.

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water... (Read full poem)