AVOID POEMS

My First Ever Mistake

The mistake I had never expected,
I did it without getting into awareness
Of how it would react.
Lacking that girl in me is like lacking
.....

Abubakar Mohammed Musa

The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell

THE ARGUMENT

RINTRAH roars and shakes his
fires in the burdenM air,
.....

William Blake

Dead Ringer

He resembles! He resembles quite like him.

The first day i light my sight on him, i can explicitly see 'him'.

.....

Sakshi Singh

Laylat-al-qadr

O the night of decree!
O the night of power!
Thy colossal significance,
Thou are better
.....

Adnan Shafi

The Maiden's Vow

(A speaker at the National Education Association advised girls not to
study algebra. Many girls, he said, had lost their souls through this
study. The idea has been taken up with enthusiasm.)

.....

Alice Duer Miller

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

The Flower And The Leaf: Or, The Lady In The Arbour.[1]

A VISION.


Now turning from the wintry signs, the sun,
.....

John Dryden

The Conclusion

Sleep not too much; nor longer than asleep
Within thy bed thy lazy body keep;
For when thou, warm awake, shall feel it soft,
Fond cogitations will assail thee oft:
.....

Francis Beaumont

Provide, Provide

The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag,

.....

Robert Frost

The Needle

Come, or the stellar tide will slip away.
Eastward avoid the hour of its decline,
Now! for the needle trembles in my soul!

.....

Ezra Pound

Things Ended

Engulfed by fear and suspicion,
mind agitated, eyes alarmed,
we try desperately to invent ways out,
plan how to avoid
.....

Constantine P. Cavafy

To Whom It May Concern

Your soul is a dead chicken lying on a city dump,
Inert and limp and sprawling,
Amid a rotten chaos of inassortable remnants,
Of rain-soaked whisky-cartons and soiled brassieres and worn-out tires and Sunday suits full of defunct moths
.....

Clark Ashton Smith

Psalm

1

Be silent with me, as all bells are silent!

.....

Ingeborg Bachmann

The Monster Of Mr Cogito

1

Lucky Saint George
from his knight's saddle
.....

Zbigniew Herbert

Stella-s Birth-day. 1724-5

As when a beauteous nymph decays,
We say she's past her dancing days;
So poets lose their feet by time,
And can no longer dance in rhyme.
.....

Jonathan Swift

Dad

When I was a kid,
Smiles filled my face,
Even with porridge for lunch,
I still felt comforted,
.....

Brian Dredan

The Fudges In England. Letter Vii. From Miss Fanny Fudge, To Her Cousin, Miss Kitty ----.

IRREGULAR ODE.

Bring me the slumbering souls of flowers,
While yet, beneath some northern sky,
.....

Thomas Moore

The Iliad: Book 22

Thus the Trojans in the city, scared like fawns, wiped the sweat
from off them and drank to quench their thirst, leaning against the
goodly battlements, while the Achaeans with their shields laid upon
their shoulders drew close up to the walls. But stern fate bade Hector
.....

Homer

The Man And His Image (prose Fable)

Once there was a man who loved himself very much, and who permitted himself no rivals in that love. He thought his face and figure the handsomest in all the world. Anything in the shape of a mirror that could show him his own likeness he took care to avoid; for he did not want to be reminded that perhaps he was over-rating his beauty. For this reason he hated looking-glasses and accused them of being false. He made a very great mistake in this respect; but that he did not mind, being quite content to live in the happiness the mistake afforded him.

To cure him of so grievous an error, officious Fate managed matters in such a way that wherever he turned his eyes they would fall on one of those mute little counsellors that ladies carry and appeal to when they are anxious about their appearance. He found mirrors in the houses; mirrors in the shops; mirrors in the pockets of gallants; mirrors even as ornaments on waist-belts of ladies.

.....

Jean De La Fontaine

Comus

A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before

The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.

.....

John Milton

Christmas Eve

I

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
.....

Robert Browning

Love's Stratagems

All these maneuverings to avoid
The touching of hands,
These shifts to keep the eyes employed
On objects more or less neutral
.....

Donald Justice

Mal Agueros

If you come to Mojacar
and peel open an orange full of worms,
count how many there are because
those are the days it will take for your body
.....

Nick Carbo

The Sea

There are certain things -a spider, a ghost,
The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three -
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
Is a thing they call the SEA.
.....

Lewis Carroll

Proverbs Of Hell

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
.....

William Blake

Only Words... My Son

Yield to love; both a proper self-love
and a sincere love for others.
One that will do no harm to you or your neighbor,
both here and for eternity.
.....

David Carolissen

The Iliad: Book 13

Now when Jove had thus brought Hector and the Trojans to the
ships, he left them to their never-ending toil, and turned his keen
eyes away, looking elsewhither towards the horse-breeders of Thrace,
the Mysians, fighters at close quarters, the noble Hippemolgi, who
.....

Homer

The Iliad: Book 17

Brave Menelaus son of Atreus now came to know that Patroclus had
fallen, and made his way through the front ranks clad in full armour
to bestride him. As a cow stands lowing over her first calf, even so
did yellow-haired Menelaus bestride Patroclus. He held his round
.....

Homer

When I Count The Seeds

40

When I count the seeds
That are sown beneath,
.....

Emily Dickinson

The Iliad: Book 15

But when their flight had taken them past the trench and the set
stakes, and many had fallen by the hands of the Danaans, the Trojans
made a halt on reaching their chariots, routed and pale with fear.
Jove now woke on the crests of Ida, where he was lying with
.....

Homer

Theron And Zoe

Zoe: Changed? very true, O Theron, I am changed.

Theron: It would at least have been as merciful
To hold a moment back from me the briar
.....

Walter Savage Landor

At A Poetry Party I Am Given The Rhyme Chih

Although I've studied poetry for thirty years
I try to keep my mouth shut and avoid reputation.
Now who is this nosy gentleman talking about my poetry
Like Yang Ching-chih
.....

Li Ching Chao

Fragments - Lines 0173 - 0178

Of all things it is poverty that most subdues a noble man,
More even than hoary old age, Kyrnos, or fever;
Indeed, to avoid it one should even throw oneself into the sea's
Deep gulfs, Kyrnos, or off sheer cliffs.
.....

Theognis

Who Is This

I came out alone on my way to my tryst.
But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?

I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

Carrion Comfort

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist-slack they may be-these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Incorrect Speaking

Incorrectness in your speech
Carefully avoid, my Anna;
Study well the sense of each
Sentence, lest in any manner
.....

Charles Lamb

Imitation Of Tibullus

'Sulpicia ad Cerinthum.'--Lib. iv.

Cruel Cerinthus! does the fell disease
Which racks my breast your fickle bosom please?
.....

George Gordon Byron

Ode To Fancy

O parent of each lovely Muse,
Thy spirit o'er my soul diffuse,
O'er all my artless songs preside,
My footsteps to thy temple guide.
.....

Joseph Warton

O, Weak And Weary World!

O weak and weary world
Forever struggling on,
When will thy toils in comfort be impearled,
When will thy sorrows and thy cares be gone?
.....

Freeman E. Miller

The Rose

Betwene the Cytee and the Chirche of Bethlehem, is the felde
Floridus, that is to seyne, the feld florisched. For als
moche as a fayre Mayden was blamed with wrong and
sclaundred, that sche hadde don fornicacioun, for whiche
.....

Robert Southey

The Terrors Of Guilt

Yon coward, with the streaming hair,
And visage, madden'd to despair,
With step convuls'd, unsettled eye,
And bosom lab'ring with a sigh,
.....

Matilda Betham

The Cockatrice

If you will listen to advice
You will avoid the Cockatrice--
A caution I need hardly say
Wholly superfluous to-day.
.....

Oliver Herford

Thanksgiving

_The Superintendent of an Almshouse. A Pauper._

SUPERINTENDENT:

.....

Ambrose Bierce

The Iliad: Book 5

Then Pallas Minerva put valour into the heart of Diomed, son of
Tydeus, that he might excel all the other Argives, and cover himself
with glory. She made a stream of fire flare from his shield and helmet
like the star that shines most brilliantly in summer after its bath in
.....

Homer

On Death

Tell me thou safest End of all our Woe,
Why wreched Mortals do avoid thee so:
Thou gentle drier o'th' afflicteds Tears,
Thou noble ender of the Cowards Fears;
.....

Anne Killigrew

The Young Rat And His Dam, The Cock And The Cat

No Cautions of a Matron, Old and Sage,
Young Rattlehead to Prudence cou'd engage;
But forth the Offspring of her Bed wou'd go,
Nor reason gave, but that he wou'd do so.
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

Battered Bob

HE WAS working on a station in the Western when I knew him,
And he came from Conongamo, up the old surveyorsâ?? track,
And the fellows all admitted that no man in Vic. could â??do him,â??
Since heâ??d smothered Stonewall Menzie, also Anderson, the black.
.....

Edward George Dyson

To The Superior Animal

To sum up all, I'm old -- and that's
A fact the years decide;
It is a common thing with cats
And not a thing to hide.
.....

Anna Laetitia Waring

The Answer

Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
.....

Robinson Jeffers

Lament For Ignacio Sà¡nchez Mejà­as

1. Cogida and death

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
.....

Federico Garcà­a Lorca