1. Baby Vamps - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 2847 times on American Poems.

BABY vamps, is it harder work than it used to be?
Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons?
  Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night?
In the winter at the skating rinks, in... (Read full poem)

A women had given birth to an old man.

  He cried to have again been caught in the pattern.

  Oh well, he sighed as he took her breast to his mouth.

  The woman is happy to have her baby, even if it is old.

  Probably it got mislaid in the baby... (Read full poem)

3. dying is fine)but Death - written by e.e. cummings
Read 37698 times on American Poems.

dying is fine)but Death

?o
baby
i

wouldn't like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying
's miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly... (Read full poem)

All that hair flashing over the Atlantic,
Henry's girl's gone. She'll find Paris a sweet place
as many times he did.
She's there now, having left yesterday. I held
her cousin's hand, all innocence, on the climb to the tower.
Her cousin is... (Read full poem)

5. The Crying Room - written by Lee Upton
Read 540 times on American Poems.

The church had a crying room—
up at the opposite side of the altar.
Good for the baby.
It was glass on all sides like a tank.
A microphone brought in the priest’s voice.
From the crying room we could see
how things happened backstage:
someone... (Read full poem)

My new Web site is dropdead.com
It's interactive you get to choose how
you'll die, where, and at what age
and it'll still come as a complete
surprise to you I guarantee
but let's not get morbid it's a game
it's more fun than bullshit.com and a lot... (Read full poem)

7. (End) of Summer (1966) - written by Bill Knott
Read 1285 times on American Poems.

I'm tired of murdering children.
Once, long ago today, they wanted to live;
now I feel Vietnam the place
where rigor mortis is beginning to set-in upon me.

I force silence down the throats of mutes,
down the throats of mating-cries of animals who... (Read full poem)

Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes, 
Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh -- makin' san' pies?
Look at dat bib -- you's es du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf -- dat's merlasses, I bet;
Come hyeah, Maria, an'... (Read full poem)

9. The Hangman at Home - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 3171 times on American Poems.

WHAT does the hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
Him if it was a good day’s work
And everything went well or do... (Read full poem)

Some primal termite knocked on wood 
And tasted it, and found it good! 
And that is why your Cousin May 
Fell through the parlor floor today.(Read full poem)

11. Hey Baby - written by Maggie Estep
Read 2262 times on American Poems.

Liner Notes - (from No More Mister Nice Girl)

I was having a foul day. Some
geezer harrassed me on the street and I got completely bent out of shape,
but the guy was huge so I just stuffed my retort. Went home to drink
coffee. No milk. I... (Read full poem)

Anger, 
as black as a hook, 
overtakes me. 
Each day, 
each Nazi
took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby
and sauteed him for breakfast
in his frying pan. 

And death looks on with a casual eye
and picks at the dirt under his fingernail. 

Man is evil,
I say... (Read full poem)

13. Baby Face - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 3208 times on American Poems.

WHITE MOON comes in on a baby face.
The shafts across her bed are flimmering.
 
Out on the land White Moon shines,
Shines and glimmers against gnarled shadows,
All silver to slow twisted shadows
Falling across the long road that runs from the... (Read full poem)

1. DREAMS

I was an ice baby.
I turned to sky blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.

My sister at six
dreamt nightly of my death:
"The baby turned to... (Read full poem)

15. The Visitation - written by Joyce Kilmer
From Main Street and Other Poems. Published in 1917. Read 1395 times on American Poems.

(For Louise Imogen Guiney)

There is a wall of flesh before the eyes
Of John, who yet perceives and hails his King.
It is Our Lady's painful bliss to bring
Before mankind the Glory of the skies.
Her cousin feels her womb's sweet burden... (Read full poem)

Come touch me baby in his waking dream
disordered Henry murmured. I'll read you Hegel
and that will hurt your mind
I can't remember when you were unkind
but I will clear that block, I'll set you on fire
along with our babies

to save them... (Read full poem)

17. The Forsaken - written by Amy Lowell
From Sword Blades & Poppy Seed. Read 2636 times on American Poems.

Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary.  Hear 
me!  I am very weary.  I have come
from a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache 
for such
far roaming.  I cannot walk as light as I used, and my 
thoughts grow confused.
I am... (Read full poem)

I would like to bury 
all the hating eyes 
under the sand somewhere off 
the North Atlantic and suffocate 
them with the awful sand 
and put all their colors to sleep 
in that soft smother. 
Take the brown eyes of my father, 
those gun shots, those... (Read full poem)

19. A Baby In The House - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 2615 times on American Poems.

I knew that a baby was hid in that house,
Though I saw no cradle and heard no cry;
But the husband was tip-toeing 'round like a mouse,
And the good wife was humming a soft lullaby;
And there was a look on the face of the mother,
That I knew... (Read full poem)

1.

You lay in the nest of your real death,
Beyond the print of my nervous fingers
Where they touched your moving head;
Your old skin puckering, your lungs' breath
Grown baby short as you looked up last
At my face swinging over the human bed,
And... (Read full poem)

21. Margaret Fuller Slack - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 781 times on American Poems.

I would have been as great as George Eliot
But for an untoward fate.
For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes --
Gray, too, and far-searching.
But there was the old, old problem:
Should it be... (Read full poem)

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

     But it was... (Read full poem)

23. Out Of Hiding - written by Li-Young Lee
Read 1319 times on American Poems.

Someone said my name in the garden,

while I grew smaller
in the spreading shadow of the peonies,

grew larger by my absence to another,
grew older among the ants, ancient

under the opening heads of the flowers,
new to myself, and... (Read full poem)

To be intoned, all but the two italicized lines, which are to be spoken in a snappy, matter-of-fact way.


Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.
Here lies a kitten good, who kept
A kitten's proper place.
He stole no pantry eatables,
Nor scratched... (Read full poem)

25. Come On In, The Senility Is Fine - written by Ogden Nash
Read 4489 times on American Poems.

People live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa,
But you don't have to live forever to become a grampa.
The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild,
You only have to live until your child has a child.
From that... (Read full poem)