1. A Rhyme About an Electrical Advertising Sign - written by Vachel Lindsay
Read 4629 times on American Poems.

I LOOK on the specious electrical light 
Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, 
Wickedly red or malignantly green 
Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. 
Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, 
The virtues of collars, from sunset till... (Read full poem)

These are the Signs to Nature's Inns --
Her invitation broad
To Whosoever famishing
To taste her mystic Bread --

These are the rites of Nature's House --
The Hospitality
That opens with an equal width
To Beggar and to Bee

For Sureties of her... (Read full poem)

3. The Products of my Farm are these - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1927 times on American Poems.

The Products of my Farm are these
Sufficient for my Own
And here and there a Benefit
Unto a Neighbor's Bin.

With Us, 'tis Harvest all the Year
For when the Frosts begin
We just reverse the Zodiac
And fetch the Acres in.(Read full poem)

"Heaven" has different Signs -- to me --
Sometimes, I think that Noon
Is but a symbol of the Place --
And when again, at Dawn,

A mighty look runs round the World
And settles in the Hills --
An Awe if it should be like that
Upon the Ignorance steals... (Read full poem)

5. Real Estate News - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 2865 times on American Poems.

ARMOUR AVENUE was the name of this street and door signs on empty houses read “The Silver Dollar,” “Swede Annie” and the Christian names of madams such as “Myrtle” and “Jenny.”
Scrap iron, rags and bottles... (Read full poem)

AMONG the men and women, the multitude, 
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, 
Acknowledging none else—not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I
    am; 
Some are baffled—But that one is... (Read full poem)

7. These Things - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 1609 times on American Poems.

these things that we support most well 
have nothing to do with up, 
and we do with them 
out of boredom or fear or money 
or cracked intelligence; 
our circle and our candle of light 
being small, 
so small we cannot bear it, 
we heave out with... (Read full poem)

1. The Poet

Someone awake when others are sleeping,
Asleep when others are awake.
An illiterate who signs everything with an X.
A man about to be hanged cracking a joke.

     2. The Poem

It is a piece of meat
Carried by a burglar
To distract a... (Read full poem)

9. Selecting A Reader - written by Ted Kooser
From Sure Signs. Published in 1980. Read 1261 times on American Poems.

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough... (Read full poem)

Absent upon Public Employment 

My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay more,
My joy, my magazine, of earthly store,
If two be one, as surely thou and I,
How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?
So many steps, head from the heart to... (Read full poem)

11. The Goose Fish - written by Howard Nemerov
Read 1935 times on American Poems.

On the long shore, lit by the moon
To show them properly alone,
Two lovers suddenly embraced
So that their shadows were as one.
The ordinary night was graced
For them by the swift tide of blood
That silently they took at flood,
And for a... (Read full poem)

My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell... (Read full poem)

13. April - written by Louise Gluck
From The Wild Iris. Published in 1993. Read 1649 times on American Poems.

No one's despair is like my despair--

You have no place in this garden
thinking such things, producing
the tiresome outward signs; the man
pointedly weeding an entire forest,
the woman limping, refusing to change clothes
or wash her... (Read full poem)

They put Us far apart --
As separate as Sea
And Her unsown Peninsula --
We signified "These see" --

They took away our Eyes --
They thwarted Us with Guns --
"I see Thee" each responded straight
Through Telegraphic Signs --

With Dungeons -- They... (Read full poem)

15. when serpents bargain for the right to squirm... (22) - written by e.e. cummings
Read 7190 times on American Poems.

when serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage-
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age

when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not... (Read full poem)

In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon
to ward off complicity--the ordered life
our leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,
our chance to live depends on such a sign
while others talk and The Pentagon from the moon
is bouncing exact commands:... (Read full poem)

17. Sonnet VIII - written by Alan Seeger
Read 283 times on American Poems.

Oft as by chance, a little while apart 
The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, 
Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, 
Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn: 
Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe 
Fill me... (Read full poem)

Spellbound held subtle Henry all his four
hearers in the racket of the market
with ancient signs, infamous characters,
new rythms. On the steps he was beloved,
hours a day, by all his four, or more,
depending. And they paid him.

It was not,... (Read full poem)

19. An Appearance - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1961. Read 4324 times on American Poems.

The smile of iceboxes annihilates me.
Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one!
I hear her great heart purr.

From her lips ampersands and percent signs
Exit like kisses.
It is Monday in her mind: morals

Launder and present themselves.
What... (Read full poem)

The longer we are together
the larger death grows around us.
How many we know by now
who are dead! We, who were young,
now count the cost of having been.
And yet as we know the dead
we grow familiar with the world.
We, who were young and... (Read full poem)

21. Crapshooters - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 1580 times on American Poems.

SOMEBODY loses whenever somebody wins.
This was known to the Chaldeans long ago.
And more: somebody wins whenever somebody loses.
This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans.
  
They take it heaven’s hereafter is an eternity of crap games where... (Read full poem)

A night that cuts between you and you
and you and you and you
and me : jostles us apart, a man elbowing
through a crowd.          We won't
look for each other, either-
wander off, each alone, not looking
in the slow crowd. Among... (Read full poem)

23. Languages - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Published in 1900. Read 2384 times on American Poems.

THERE are no handles upon a language
Whereby men take hold of it
And mark it with signs for its remembrance.
It is a river, this language,
Once in a thousand years
Breaking a new course
Changing its way to the ocean.
It is mountain effluvia
Moving... (Read full poem)

I've known the pleasures of being
fired at least eleven times—

most notably by Larry who found my snood
unsuitable, another time by Jack,
whom I was sleeping with. Poor attitude,
tardiness, a contagious lack
of team spirit; I have been... (Read full poem)

25. Mr. Mine - written by Anne Sexton
Read 4773 times on American Poems.

Notice how he has numbered the blue veins
in my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles.
Now he goes left. Now he goes right.
He is buiding a city, a city of flesh.
He's an industrialist. He has starved in cellars
and, ladies and gentlemen, he's... (Read full poem)