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)

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)

3. The Pattern - written by Russell Edson
Read 1366 times on American Poems.

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)

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)

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. Little Brown Baby - written by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Read 2621 times on American Poems.

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)

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)

9. 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)

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)

11. Early Moon - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 2832 times on American Poems.

THE BABY moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west.
A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon.
One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, keep a... (Read full poem)

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the... (Read full poem)

13. Dream Song 131: Come touch me baby in his waking dream - written by John Berryman
From His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. Published in 1968. Read 977 times on American Poems.

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)

What was is . . . since 1930;
the boys in my old gang
are senior partners.  They start up
bald like baby birds
to embrace retirement.

At the altar of surrender,
I met you
in the hour of credulity.
How your misfortune came out clearly
to... (Read full poem)

15. (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)

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and... (Read full poem)

17. Lesbos - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1962. Read 9091 times on American Poems.

Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors --
Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological... (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)

19. Stars - written by Joyce Kilmer
From Trees and Other Poems. Published in 1914. Read 4972 times on American Poems.

(For the Rev. James J. Daly, S. J.)

Bright stars, yellow stars, flashing through the air,
Are you errant strands of Lady Mary's hair?
As she slits the cloudy veil and bends down through,
Do you fall across her cheeks and over heaven too?
Gay... (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)

21. A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten - written by Vachel Lindsay
Read 941 times on American Poems.

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)

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)

23. Blue Island Intersection - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 2019 times on American Poems.

SIX street ends come together here.
They feed people and wagons into the center.
In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags,
Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies.
Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day.
The... (Read full poem)

is what we called her. The story was
that her father had thrown Drano at her
which was probably true, given the way she slouched
through fifth grade, afraid of the world, recess
especially. She had acne scars
before she had acne—poxs and... (Read full poem)

25. Hamlet Off-Stage: Mona Gator - written by D.C. Berry
Read 360 times on American Poems.

Our mascot lives low, a baby alligator.
She's our happy-and-sad mask all at once,
Mona Lisa her name. She's my ideal,
her wrap-around grin both a smile and snarl.(Read full poem)