1. Griffy the Cooper - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 1370 times on American Poems.

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)

I don't care how God-damn smart
these guys are:     I'm bored.

It's been raining like hell all day long
and there's nothing to do.

Written January 24, 1967
while poet-in-residence at
the California Institute of 
Technology.(Read full poem)

3. A Promise to California. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 2838 times on American Poems.

A PROMISE to California, 
Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon: 
Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust
    American
	love;
	
For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you,... (Read full poem)

FACING west, from California’s shores, 
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, 
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations,
	look afar, 
Look off the shores of my Western Sea—the circle... (Read full poem)

5. From My Last Years. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 3628 times on American Poems.

FROM my last years, last thoughts I here bequeath, 
Scatter’d and dropt, in seeds, and wafted to the West, 
Through moisture of Ohio, prairie soil of Illinois—through Colorado, California air, 
For Time to germinate fully.(Read full poem)

for Aaron Fogel 

Politically-correct 
personal computers 
point and click. 

President Clinton
(codename Peacock) 
can't protect 
crack pushing 
Communist Party 
cops pursuing 
a care package 
of peasant consciousness
in a car park. 

Poverty's a... (Read full poem)

7. Dream Song 128: A hemorrhage of his left ear of Good Friday - written by John Berryman
From His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. Published in 1968. Read 1917 times on American Poems.

A hemorrhage of his left ear of Good Friday—
so help me Jesus—then made funny too
the other, further one.
There must have been a bit. Sheets scrubbed away 
soon all but three nails. Doctors in this city O
will not (his wife cried)... (Read full poem)

FROM Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird, 
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all; 
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs, 
To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myself—to Michigan then, 
To Wisconsin, Iowa,... (Read full poem)

9. Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!) - written by Frank O\'Hara
Read 1929 times on American Poems.

Lana Turner has collapsed! 
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the... (Read full poem)

(with apologies to Frederic Taber Cooper)

I well recall (and who does not)
The circus bill-board hippopotamus,
whose wide distended jaws
For fear and terror were good cause.

That month, that vasty carmine cave,
Could munch with ease a... (Read full poem)

11. Dream Song 130: When I saw my friend covered with blood, I thought - written by John Berryman
From His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. Published in 1968. Read 1043 times on American Poems.

When I saw my friend covered with blood, I thought
This is the end of the dream, now I'll wake up.
That was more years ago
than I care to reckon, and my friend is not 
dying but adhering to an élite group
in California O.

Why did I... (Read full poem)

A freaking ankle crabbed his blissful trips,
this whiskey tastes like California
but is Kentucky,
like Berkeley where he truly worked at it
but nothing broke all night—no fires—one dawn,
crowding his luck,

flowed down along the... (Read full poem)

13. It's Raining In Love - written by Richard Brautigan
Published in 1950. Read 4261 times on American Poems.

I don't know what it is,
  but I distrust myself
  when I start to like a girl
  a lot.

  It makes me nervous.
  I don't say the right things
  or perhaps I start
  to examine,
  evaluate,
 compute
  what I am saying.

  If I say, "Do you... (Read full poem)

Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep--
one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by
one four-footed pattering up and over--one by one wiggling
their stub tails as they take the short jump and go
over--one by one silently... (Read full poem)

15. Wisteria - written by Philip Levine
Read 592 times on American Poems.

The first purple wisteria 
I recall from boyhood hung 
on a wire outside the windows 
of the breakfast room next door 
at the home of Steve Pisaris. 
I loved his tall, skinny daughter, 
or so I thought, and I would wait 
beside the back door,... (Read full poem)

Rain drenches the patio stones.
All night was spent waiting 
for an earthquake, and instead 

water stains sand with its pink foam.
Yesterday's steps fill in with gray crabs.  
Baritone of a fog horn. A misty light 

warns tankers, which block the... (Read full poem)

17. Two Items - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 1117 times on American Poems.

STRONG rocks hold up the riksdag bridge … always strong river waters shoving their shoulders against them …
In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking to each other about more potatoes and bread for the Swedish people to eat... (Read full poem)

Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,

certain airy white blossoms punctually
reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark... (Read full poem)

19. The Threat - written by Denise Duhamel
Read 2756 times on American Poems.

my mother pushed my sister out of the apartment door with an empty 
suitcase because she kept threatening to run away  my sister was sick of me
getting the best of everything  the bathrobe with the pink stripes instead of 
the red  the soft... (Read full poem)

Seven years ago I went into 
the High Sierras stunned by the desire 
to die. For hours I stared into a clear 
mountain stream that fell down 
over speckled rocks, and then I 
closed my eyes and prayed that when 
I opened them I would be gone 
and... (Read full poem)

21. A Supermarket In California - written by Allen Ginsberg
From Howl and Other Poems. Published in 1955. Read 17140 times on American Poems.

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit- 
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees 
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. 
     In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, 
I went into the neon fruit... (Read full poem)

The only thing I miss about Los Angeles

is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing

--pimps, surplus... (Read full poem)

23. Call It Music - written by Philip Levine
Read 805 times on American Poems.

Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song
in my own breath. I'm alone here
in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky
above the St. George Hotel clear, clear
for New York, that is. The radio playing
"Bird Flight," Parker in his California
tragic... (Read full poem)

1
OF these years I sing, 
How they pass and have pass’d, through convuls’d pains as through parturitions; 
How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfillment, the
    Absolute
	Success, despite of... (Read full poem)

25. Song of the Redwood-Tree. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 3082 times on American Poems.

1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying... (Read full poem)