ABSURD POEMS

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The Escape Of The Old Grey Squirrel

Old Grey Squirrel might have been
Almost anything -
Might have been a soldier, sailor,
Tinker, tailor
.....
Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes
Words

If on isle of the sea
I have to tarry,
With one book, let it be
A Dictionary.
.....
Robert Service

Robert Service
Law Like Love

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.
.....
W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden
Bénédiction (benediction)

Lorsque, par un décret des puissances suprêmes,
Le Poète apparaît en ce monde ennuyé,
Sa mère épouvantée et pleine de blasphèmes
Crispe ses poings vers Dieu, qui la prend en pitié:
.....
Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire
In All Ways A Woman

In my young years I took pride in the fact that luck was called a lady. In fact, there were so few public acknowledgments of the female presence that I felt personally honored whenever nature and large ships were referred to as feminine. But as I matured, I began to resent being considered a sister to a changeling as fickle as luck, as aloof as an ocean, and as frivolous as nature. The phrase 'A woman always has the right to change her mind' played so aptly into the negative image of the female that I made myself a victim to an unwavering decision. Even if I made an inane and stupid choice, I stuck by it rather than 'be like a woman and change my mind.'

Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still relentless, unending work. Becoming an old female may require only being born with certain genitalia, inheriting long-living genes and the fortune not to be run over by an out-of-control truck, but to become and remain a woman command the existence and employment of genius.

.....
Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou
Agnostic Apology

I am a stout materialist;
With abstract terms I can't agree,
And so I've made a little list
Of words that don't make sense to me.
.....
Robert Service

Robert Service
Faith

This much I know:
God does not wrong us here,
Though oft His judgments seem severe
And reason falters 'neath the blow,
.....
Edgar Albert Guest

Edgar Albert Guest
The Jackaw Of Rheims

The Jackdaw sat on the Cardinal's chair!
Bishop, and abbot, and prior were there;
Many a monk, and many a friar,
Many a knight, and many a squire,
.....

Richard Harris Barham
The Hunting Of The Snark

Dedication

Inscribed to a dear Child:
in memory of golden summer hours
.....
Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll
The Perils Of Invisibility

Old PETER led a wretched life -
Old PETER had a furious wife;
Old PETER too was truly stout,
He measured several yards about.
.....

William Schwenck Gilbert
The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07/M/378/ This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
.....
W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden
Easter-day

HOW very hard it is to be
A Christian! Hard for you and me,
â??Not the mere task of making real
That duty up to its ideal,
.....
Robert Browning

Robert Browning
The Nightingale

NO easy matter 'tis to hold,
Against its owner's will, the fleece
Who troubled by the itching smart
Of Cupid's irritating dart,
.....

Jean De La Fontaine
Prejudice

IN yonder red-brick mansion, tight and square,
Just at the town's commencement, lives the mayor.
Some yards of shining gravel, fenced with box,
Lead to the painted portal--where one knocks :
.....

Jane Taylor
An Ode To My Love

Oda a su amante

Typical night
I found myself being with a guy
.....
Angela Bugtai

Angela Bugtai
An Essay On Man: Epistle I.

THE DESIGN.

Having proposed to write some pieces on human life and manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being.

.....
Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope
The Odyssey: Book 23

Euryclea now went upstairs laughing to tell her mistress that her
dear husband had come home. Her aged knees became young again and
her feet were nimble for joy as she went up to her mistress and bent
over her head to speak to her. “Wake up Penelope, my dear child,”
.....

Homer
Marriage

Should I get married? Should I be Good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
.....

Gregory Corso
The Human Face

I. Soon

Of all the springtimes of the world
This one is the ugliest
.....

Paul Eluard
The Airy Christ

After reading Dr Rieuâ??s translation of St Markâ??s Gospel.

Who is this that comes in splendour, coming from the blazing East?
This is he we had not thought of, this is he the airy Christ.
.....

Stevie Smith
Here Comes

(a flip through BRIDE's)

The silver spoons
were warbling
.....

Erica Jong
Conferring With Myself

1655

Conferring with myself
My stranger disappeared
.....
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
Richard Minutolo

IN ev'ry age, at Naples, we are told,
Intrigue and gallantry reign uncontrolled;
With beauteous objects in abundance blessed.
No country round so many has possessed;
.....

Jean De La Fontaine
There Once Was An Old Man Of Lyme

There once was an old man of Lyme,
Who married three wives at a time.
When asked, “Why the third?”
He said, “One's absurd,
.....

Anonymous
Cleon

"As certain also of your own poets have said"--
(Acts 17.28)
Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea
.....
Robert Browning

Robert Browning
Old Town Types

I can not recall his heyday; for I knew him in the day
When his curly hair had thinned a bit, his waxed moustache grown grey.
That he kept the local fruit shop was a trifle in life's plan;
For our Captain Curly Taplin was a military man.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
The Lodger

I cannot
quite recall
When first he came,
So reticent and tall,
.....
Bliss Carman

Bliss Carman
The Glass-vendor

There are some natures purely contemplative and antipathetic to action, who nevertheless, under a mysterious and inexplicable impulse, sometimes act with a rapidity of which they would have believed themselves incapable. Such a one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards action, like an arrow from a bow.
The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the most absurd and even the most dangerous acts.
One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only too well.
Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, in order to see, to know, to tempt Destwiy, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most indolent and dreamy beings.
.....
Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire
Apologia Pro Poemate Meo

I, too, saw God through mud-
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.
.....
Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen
Limerick: There Once Was An Old Man Of Lyme

There once was an old man of Lyme
Who married three wives at a time,
When asked, 'Why a third?'
He replied, 'One's absurd!
.....

William Cosmo Monkhouse
Apology To Delia: For Desiring A Lock Of Her Hair

Delia, the unkindest girl on earth,
When I besought the fair,
That favour of intrinsic worth
A ringlet of her hair,
.....
William Cowper

William Cowper
Merry Autumn

It's all a farce,-these tales they tell
About the breezes sighing,
And moans astir o'er field and dell,
Because the year is dying.
.....
Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar
"?"

If you had the choice of two women to wed,
(Though of course the idea is quite absurd)
And the first from her heels to her dainty head
Was charming in every sense of the word:
.....

Robert William Service
Dreams

Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes;
When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes:
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings:
.....
John Dryden

John Dryden
My Guardian Angel

When looking back I dimly see
The trails my feet have trod,
Some hand divine, it seems to me,
Has pulled the strings with God;
.....

Robert William Service
The Progress Of Error.

Si quid loquar audiendam.--Hor. Lib. iv. Od. 2.



.....
William Cowper

William Cowper
The Song Of The Banjo

You couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile --
You mustn't leave a fiddle in the damp --
You couldn't raft an organ up the Nile,
And play it in an Equatorial swamp.
.....
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling
The Diggers

Bristling Billy the porcupine,
A person that nobody liked,
Sinking a shaft on an ant-bed mine,
Came on a burrowing lizard's line,
.....

Banjo Paterson
Poetry And Reality

THE worldly minded, cast in common mould,
With all his might pursuing fame or gold,
And towards that goal too vehemently hurled
To waste a thought about another world,
.....

Jane Taylor
Expostulation

Why weeps the muse for England? What appears
In England's case to move the muse to tears?
From side to side of her delightful isle
Is she not clothed with a perpetual smile?
.....
William Cowper

William Cowper
To The Sighing Strephon

Your pardon, my friend, if my rhymes did offend;
Your pardon, a thousand times o'er:
From friendship I strove your pangs to remove,
But, I swear, I will do so no more.
.....

George Gordon Byron
Tale Iii

THE GENTLEMAN FARMER.

Gwyn was a farmer, whom the farmers all,
Who dwelt around, 'the Gentleman' would call;
.....
George Crabbe

George Crabbe
Words For Departure

Nothing was remembered, nothing forgotten.
When we awoke, wagons were passing on the warm summer pavements,
The window-sills were wet from rain in the night,
Birds scattered and settled over chimneypots
.....

Louise Bogan
The Beasts' Confession

To the Priest, on Observing how most Men mistake their own Talents

When beasts could speak (the learned say,
They still can do so ev'ry day),
.....
Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift
Bel Canto

The sun is high, the seaside air is sharp,
And salty light reveals the Mayan School.
The Irish hope their names are on the harp,
We see the sheep's advertisement for wool,
.....

Kenneth Koch
To Mrs. Goodchild

The night-wind's shriek is pitiless and hollow,
The boding bat flits by on sullen wing,
And I sit desolate, like that 'one swallow'
Who found (with horror) that he'd not brought spring:
.....

Charles Stuart Calverley
The Ladle. A Tale

The Sceptics think 'twas long ago
Since gods came down
incognito

.....
Matthew Prior

Matthew Prior
The Indiscreet Confessions

FAMED Paris ne'er within its walls had got,
Such magick charms as were Aminta's lot,
Youth, beauty, temper, fortune, she possessed,
And all that should a husband render blessed,
.....

Jean De La Fontaine
Four Riddles

I

There was an ancient City, stricken down
With a strange frenzy, and for many a day
.....
Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll
It Happens In The B.r. Families

'Twas on the shores that round our coast
From Deal to Newport lie
That I roused from sleep in a huddled heap
An elderly wealthy guy.
.....

Franklin Pierce Adams