CIRCUS POEMS
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Life Is A Circus
A young lad blossoms from a petal,
Many challenges to come and yet to settle.
Here begins life's crazy circus,
To be happy but yet sometimes serious.
.....
Priyadarshini Goel
Cloony The Clown
I'll tell you the story of Cloony the Clown
Who worked in a circus that came through town.
His shoes were too big and his hat was too small,
But he just wasn't, just wasn't funny at all.
.....
Shel Silverstein
The Circus
I remember when I wrote The Circus
I was living in Paris, or rather we were living in Paris
Janice, Frank was alive, the Whitney Museum
Was still on 8th Street, or was it still something else?
.....
Kenneth Koch
Cirque D'hiver
Across the floor flits the mechanical toy,
fit for a king of several centuries back.
A little circus horse with real white hair.
His eyes are glossy black.
.....
Elizabeth Bishop
Extraits
The Man Closing Up,' from Night Light' (1967),
would make his bed,
If he could sleep on it.
.....
Donald Justice
Legends
CLOWNS DYINGFIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face.
STEAMBOAT BILLWhen the boilers of the Robert E. Lee exploded, a steamboat winner of many races on the Mississippi went to the bottom of the river and never again saw the wharves of Natchez and New Orleans.
And a legend lives on that two gamblers were blown toward the sky and during their journey laid bets on which of the two would go higher and which would be first to set foot on the turf of the earth again.
.....
Carl Sandburg
Chicks
THE CHICK in the egg picks at the shell, cracks open one oval world, and enters another oval world.
'Cheep... cheep... cheep' is the salutation of the newcomer, the emigrant, the casual at the gates of the new world.
.....
Carl Sandburg
The Soldier Birds
I mind the river from Mount Frome
To Ballanshantieâ??s Bridge,
The Mudgee Hills, and Buckaroo,
Loweâ??s Peak, and Granite Ridge.
.....
Henry Lawson
A Ritual To Read To Each Other
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
.....
William Stafford
Little Snail
I saw a little snail
Come down the garden walk.
He wagged his head this way . . . that way . . .
Like a clown in a circus.
.....
Hilda Conkling
The Big Top
The boom and blare of the big brass band is cheering to my heart
And I like the smell of the trampled grass and elephants and hay.
I take off my hat to the acrobat with his delicate, strong art,
And the motley mirth of the chalk-faced clown drives all my care away.
.....
Joyce Kilmer
Captain Craig Ii
Yet that ride had an end, as all rides have;
And the days coming after took the road
That all days take,-though never one of them
Went by but I got some good thought of it
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Splash
the illusion is that you are simply
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a
.....
Charles Bukowski
Nero-s Incendiary Song
Aweary unto death, my friends, a mood by wise abhorred,
Come to the novel feast I spread, thrice-consul, Nero, lord,
The Caesar, master of the world, and eke of harmony,
Who plays the harp of many strings, a chief of minstrelsy.
.....
Victor Marie Hugo
Who Santy-claus Wuz
Jes' a little bit o' feller--I remember still--
Ust to almost cry fer Christmas, like a youngster will.
Fourth o' July's nothin' to it!--New Year's ain't a smell!
Easter-Sunday--Circus-day--jes' all dead in the shell!
.....
James Whitcomb Riley
The Ravaged Face
Outlandish as a circus, the ravaged face
Parades the marketplace, lurid and stricken
By some unutterable chagrin,
Maudlin from leaky eye to swollen nose.
.....
Sylvia Plath
In Midas' Country
Meadows of gold dust. The silver
Currents of the Connecticut fan
And meander in bland pleatings under
River-verge farms where rye-heads whiten.
.....
Sylvia Plath
Bendy's Sermon
[Bendigo, the well-known Nottingham prize fighter, became converted to religion, and preached at revival meetings throughout the country.]
You didn't know of Bendigo! Well, that knocks me out!
Who's your board school teacher? What's he been about?
.....
Arthur Conan Doyle
London Types - X. News-boy
Take any station, pavement, circus, corner,
Where men their styles of print may call or choose,
And there - ten times more on it than JACK HORNER -
There shall you find him swathed in sheets of news.
.....
William Ernest Henley
Attila
What though his feet were shod with sharp, fierce flame,
And death and ruin were his daily squires,
The Scythian, helped by Heaven's thunders, came:
The time was ripe for God's avenging fires.
.....
Henry Kendall
Heine In Paris
LATE: a cold smear of sunlight bathes the room;
The gilt lime of winter, a sun grown melancholy old,
Streams in the glass. Outside, ten thousand chimneys fume,
Looping the weather-birds with rings of gold;
.....
Kenneth Slessor
Imperante Augusto Natus Est--
What it was struck the terror into me?
This, Publius: closer! while we wait our turn
I'll tell you. Water's warm (they ring inside)
At the eighth hour, till when no use to bathe.
.....
Robert Browning
London Types: News Boy
Take any station, pavement, circus, corner,
Where men their styles of print may call or choose,
And there-ten times more on it than Jack Horner-
There you shall find him swathed in sheets of news.
.....
William Ernest Henley
Rome
Above the circus of the world she sat,
Beautiful and base, a harlot crowned with pride:
Fierce nations, upon whom she sneered and spat,
Shrieked at her feet and for her pastime died.
.....
Madison Julius Cawein
Tomboy
There's a little girl I know
And we call her So-and-So.
She is neither good nor bad
Good enough for me although!
.....
Madison Julius Cawein
Election Day
Despots effete upon tottering thrones
Unsteadily poised upon dead men's bones,
Walk up! walk up! the circus is free,
And this wonderful spectacle you shall see:
.....
Ambrose Bierce
An Expostulation To Lord King
How can you, my Lord, thus delight to torment all
The Peers of realm about cheapening their corn,
When you know, if one hasn't a very high rental,
'Tis hardly worth while being very high born?
.....
Thomas Moore
Fleet Street
BENEATH this narrow jostling street,
Unruffled by the noise of feet,
Like a slow organ-note I hear
The pulses of the great world beat.
.....
Arthur Henry Adams
The Crusaders
What price yer humble, Dicko Smith,
in gaudy putties girt,
With sand-blight in his optics, and much
leaner than he started,
.....
Edward George Dyson