1. Hum Bom! - written by Allen Ginsberg
From The Fall of America. Published in 1971. Read 5406 times on American Poems.

I

Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!

Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we... (Read full poem)

Our life is a fire dampened, or a fire shut up in stone.
                        --Jacob Boehme, De Incarnatione Verbi

Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple.
Daybreak: a seam at the curve of the world.  The trousered legs of... (Read full poem)

3. The Firebombers - written by Anne Sexton
Read 2027 times on American Poems.

We are America. 
We are the coffin fillers. 
We are the grocers of death. 
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers. 

The bomb opens like a shoebox. 
And the child? 
The child is certainly not yawning. 
And the woman? 
The woman is bathing her... (Read full poem)

To interrupt His Yellow Plan
The Sun does not allow
Caprices of the Atmosphere --
And even when the Snow

Heaves Balls of Specks, like Vicious Boy
Directly in His Eye --
Does not so much as turn His Head
Busy with Majesty --

'Tis His to stimulate... (Read full poem)

5. To The Whore Who Took My Poems - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 26271 times on American Poems.

some say we should keep personal remorse from the 
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out... (Read full poem)

They come back in their white
shifts, their ruffled shawls of salt
white, the way the dead always return
when you need them the most—

when it's too hot to do anything
but picture the worst—the Bomb
finally fallen, the world... (Read full poem)

7. These are the Nights that Beetles love -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1412 times on American Poems.

These are the Nights that Beetles love --
From Eminence remote
Drives ponderous perpendicular
His figure intimate
The terror of the Children
The merriment of men
Depositing his Thunder
He hoists abroad again --
A Bomb upon the Ceiling
Is an... (Read full poem)

HOW many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?
 
What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,
 
Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman’s mouth of passion kisses, a nun’s mouth of sweet thinking, here... (Read full poem)

9. Identification In Belfast - written by Robert Lowell
Read 2180 times on American Poems.

(I.R.A. Bombing)

The British Army now carries two rifles,
one with rubber rabbit-pellets for children,
the other's of course for the Provisionals....
'When they first showed me the boy, I thought oh good,
it's not him because he's... (Read full poem)

I

If nature is life, nature is death:
It is winter as it is spring:
Confusion is variety, variety
And confusion in everything
Make experience the true conclusion
Of all desire and opulence,
All satisfaction and poverty.

II

When a hundred years... (Read full poem)

11. The Soul has Bandaged moments -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 4692 times on American Poems.

The Soul has Bandaged moments --
When too appalled to stir --
She feels some ghastly Fright come up
And stop to look at her --

Salute her -- with long fingers --
Caress her freezing hair --
Sip, Goblin, from the very lips
The Lover -- hovered --... (Read full poem)

I tie my Hat -- I crease my Shawl --
Life's little duties do -- precisely --
As the very least
Were infinite -- to me --

I put new Blossoms in the Glass --
And throw the old -- away --
I push a petal from my gown
That anchored there -- I weigh
The... (Read full poem)

13. BOMB - written by Gregory Corso
Read 3834 times on American Poems.

Budger of history   Brake of time   You   Bomb
      Toy of universe   Grandest of all snatched sky   I cannot hate you
        Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt   the jawbone of an ass
     The bumpy club of One Million B.C.   the mace   the... (Read full poem)

The children are all crying in their pens
and the surf carries their cries away.
They are old men who have seen too much,
their mouths are full of dirty clothes,
the tongues poverty, tears like puss.
The surf pushes their cries back.
Listen.
They... (Read full poem)

15. The Bride of Frankenstein - written by Edward Field
Read 646 times on American Poems.

The Baron has decided to mate the monster,
to breed him perhaps,
in the interests of pure science, his only god.

So he goes up into his laboratory
which he has built in the tower of the castle
to be as near the interplanetary forces as... (Read full poem)

I -- A Pleasant Afternoon

                for Michael Brownstein and Dick Gallup


One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-
        tauqua tent in Aurora
listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating... (Read full poem)

17. The Lion For Real - written by Allen Ginsberg
From Reality Sandwiches. Published in 1958. Read 10400 times on American Poems.

"Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..."


I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson... (Read full poem)

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. 
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 
        17, 1956. 
I can't stand my own mind. 
America when will we end the human war? 
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. 
I don't feel good... (Read full poem)