1. Raw With Love - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 2907 times on American Poems.

little dark girl with 
kind eyes 
when it comes time to 
use the knife 
I won't flinch and 
i won't blame 
you, 
as I drive along the shorealone 
as the palms wave, 
the ugly heavy palms, 
as the living does not arrive 
as the dead do notleave, 
i... (Read full poem)

Their spirits beat upon mine
Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.
I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.
I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes
Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes,
And when they turned their... (Read full poem)

3. A High-Toned Old Christian Woman - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 3180 times on American Poems.

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But... (Read full poem)

The Jumbo Jet has barely shuddered off
The ground, and I'm depressed. My scuba mask
And fins, my fly rod and beach hat

Crush each other in an overhead locker
Dark as the bedroom closet they're returning to.
Already the week's good times... (Read full poem)

5. Forbidden Fruit - written by Michael Lally
Read 1029 times on American Poems.

all the forbidden fruit I ever
dreamt of--or was taught to
resist and fear--ripens and
blossoms under the palms of my
hands as they uncover and explore
you--and in the most secret
corners of my heart as it discovers
and adores you--the forbidden... (Read full poem)

My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
     of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
          at the same time. I think

praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
     staying... (Read full poem)

7. Gunner - written by Randall Jarrell
Read 1807 times on American Poems.

Did they send me away from my cat and my wife
To a doctor who poked me and counted my teeth,
To a line on a plain, to a stove in a tent?
Did I nod in the flies of the schools?
And the fighters rolled into the tracer like rabbits,
The blood froze... (Read full poem)

When the writing is going well,
I am a prince in a desert palace,
fountains flowing in the garden.
I lean an elbow on a velvet pillow
and drink from a silver goblet,
poems like a banquet
spread before me on rugs
with rosettes the damask of blood.... (Read full poem)

9. Of Tribulation, these are They - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1481 times on American Poems.

Of Tribulation, these are They,
Denoted by the White --
The Spangled Gowns, a lesser Rank
Of Victors -- designate --

All these -- did conquer --
But the ones who overcame most times --
Wear nothing commoner than Snow --
No Ornament, but Palms... (Read full poem)

I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. 
But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. 
And I hunger. 

I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. 
I have been in the fields all day. My throat is... (Read full poem)

11. Southern Sunrise - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1956. Read 4272 times on American Poems.

Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, thier balconies
Fine as hand-
Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.

Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends... (Read full poem)

A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, 
With palms extent for amorous charity 
And eyes incensed with love for all they see, 
A wonder more to be adored than wooed, 
On whom the grace of conscious womanhood 
Adorning every little thing she... (Read full poem)

13. Mahalia Jackson - written by James A. Emanuel
From Jazz From the Haiku King. Published in 1999. Read 1270 times on American Poems.

« I sing the LORD'S songs »
(palms once tough to stay alive,
alarm clock on five).

Cinnamon cheeks, Lord,
cornbread smile.     SONGS     feed your ribs
when you're hungry,... (Read full poem)

The night sky's a black stretch limo, boss in the back
behind tinted glass. You could say that.

Down here's a dungeon, up there's the glittering
ring of keys in the sentry's fist. The self

exists. Beauty too. But they're elsewhere.
You... (Read full poem)

15. Sonnets 02: Into The Golden Vessel Of Great Song - written by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Read 1440 times on American Poems.

Into the golden vessel of great song
Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast
Let other lovers lie, in love and rest;
Not we,—articulate, so, but with the tongue
Of all the world: the churning blood, the long
Shuddering quiet, the... (Read full poem)

If we sang in the wood (and Death is a German expert)
while snows flies, chill, after so frequent knew
so many all nothing,
for lead & fire, it's not we would assert
particulars, but animal; cats mew,
horses scream, man sing.

Or: men pslam.... (Read full poem)

17. Absences - written by Donald Justice
Read 8496 times on American Poems.

It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.
There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,
Like the memory of scales descending the white keys
Of a childhood piano--outside the window, palms!
And the heavy head of the cereus,... (Read full poem)

Florida

An Airedale rolling through green frost,
cabbage palms pointing their accusing leaves 
at whom, petulant waves breaking at my feet. 
I ran from them. Nights, yellow lights 
scoured sand. What was ever found 
but women in skirts folded... (Read full poem)

19. Last Words - written by Philip Levine
Read 773 times on American Poems.

If the shoe fell from the other foot 
who would hear? If the door 
opened onto a pure darkness 
and it was no dream? If your life 
ended the way a book ends 
with half a blank page and the survivors 
gone off to Africa or madness? 
If my life ended... (Read full poem)

When I was young, I used to
Watch behind the curtains
As men walked up and down the street. Wino men, old men.
Young men sharp as mustard.
See them. Men are always
Going somewhere.
They knew I was there. Fifteen
Years old and starving for... (Read full poem)

21. The Prarie Battlements - written by Vachel Lindsay
Read 1430 times on American Poems.

(To Edgar Lee Masters, with great respect)

HERE upon the prarie 
Is our ancestral hall. 
Agate is the dome, 
Cornelian the wall. 
Ghouls are in the cellar, 
But fays upon the stairs. 
And here lived old King Silver Dreams, 
Always at his... (Read full poem)

If one poor burdened toiler o’er life’s road, 
Who meets us by the way, 
Goes on less conscious of his galling load, 
Then life, indeed, does pay.

If we can show the troubled heart the gain
That lies always in loss, 
Why, then, we too are... (Read full poem)

23. Between the form of Life and Life - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 3521 times on American Poems.

Between the form of Life and Life
The difference is as big
As Liquor at the Lip between
And Liquor in the Jug
The latter -- excellent to keep --
But for ecstatic need
The corkless is superior --
I know for I have tried(Read full poem)

The cooper should know about tubs. 
But I learned about life as well, 
And you who loiter around these graves 
Think you know life. 
You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps, 
In truth you are only looking around the interior of... (Read full poem)

25. Voyages II - written by Hart Crane
Read 1956 times on American Poems.

--And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;

Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
On... (Read full poem)