DIRECTION POEMS

What Is Time?

Time !
a running track, that clock's good and bad
minute of temptations and trials
seconds of death and judgment
.....

Afe Tosin Shola

Address To The Devil

O Prince, O chief of many throned pow'rs!
That led th' embattled seraphim to war!
(Milton, Paradise Lost)

.....

Robert Burns

Wayfarer

A desert life, lonely it may seem
A long journey awaits
But aimless you feel
With no clear path to take
.....

Juana Liwanag

Venus And Adonis

Even as the sun with purple-coloured face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn.
.....

William Shakespeare

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

The Odyssey: Book 09

And Ulysses answered, “King Alcinous, it is a good thing to hear a
bard with such a divine voice as this man has. There is nothing better
or more delightful than when a whole people make merry together,
with the guests sitting orderly to listen, while the table is loaded
.....

Homer

The Mystery

I was not; now I am-a few days hence
I shall not be; I fain would look before
And after, but can neither do; some Power
Or lack of power says “no” to all I would.
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Carrier's Story Or, Brighten's Sister-in-law

At a point where the old road crosses
The river, and turns to the right,
I'd camped with the team; and the hosses
Was all fixed up for the night.
.....

Henry Lawson

Sonnet Lxxxi: Rest With Your Dream Inside My Dream

Already, you are mine. Rest with your dream inside my dream.
Love, grief, labour, must sleep now.
Night revolves on invisible wheels
and joined to me you are pure as sleeping amber.
.....

Pablo Neruda

The Rowing Song

Round the world and home again
That's the sailor's way
Faster faster, faster faster

.....

Roald Dahl

Narcissus

Where the minnows trace
A glinting web quick hid in the gloom of the brook,
When I think of the place
And remember the small lad lying intent to look
.....

D. H. Lawrence

Radar

A Postscript for Marianne Moore

No one exactly knows
Exactly how clouds look in the sky
.....

Jack Spicer

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

Bongaloo

'What is a Bongaloo, Daddy?'
'A Bongaloo, Son,' said I,
'Is a tall bag of cheese
Plus a Chinaman's knees
.....

Spike Milligan

A Sonnet

WEEPING, murmuring, complaining,
Lost to every gay delight;
MYRA, too sincere for feigning,
Fears th' approaching bridal night.
.....

Oliver Goldsmith

Corsons Inlet

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning
to the sea,
then turned right along
the surf
.....

Archie Randolph Ammons

Alone In The Woods

Alone in the woods I felt
The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees
Nature has taught her creatures to hate
Man that fusses and fumes
.....

Stevie Smith

Pockets

Are generally over or around
Erogenous zones, they seem to dive
In the direction of those

.....

Howard Nemerov

The Ship Of Death

I

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
.....

David Herbert Lawrence

Rovigo

ROVIGO STATION. Unclear associations. A drama of Goethe
or something from Byron. I traveled through Rovigo
n times and exactly at the nth time I understood
that in my inner geography it is a special
.....

Zbigniew Herbert

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

Answer To Tait

The mounted disk of ebonite
Has whirled before, nor whirled in vain;
Rowland of Troy, that doughty knight,
Convection currents did obtain
.....

James Clerk Maxwell

Fast Break

In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984


A hook shot kisses the rim and
.....

Edward Hirsch

Truth

Man, on the dubious waves of error toss'd,
His ship half founder'd, and his compass lost,
Sees, far as human optics may command,
A sleeping fog, and fancies it dry land;
.....

William Cowper

To A Black Gin

Daughter of Eve, draw nearâ??I would behold thee.
Good Heavens! Could ever arm of man enfold thee?
Did the same Nature that made Phryne mould thee?

.....

James Brunton Stephens

The Bloody Game

THE BLOODY GAME

Rash decisions take us in the wrong direction,
Lack of wisdom leads to destruction.
.....

Mohammad Younus

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

An Epistle

From Joshua Ibn Vives of Allorqui to his Former Master, Solomon
Levi-Paul, de Santa-Maria, Bishop of Cartegna Chancellor of
Castile, and Privy Councillor to King Henry III. of Spain.

.....

Emma Lazarus

Compact Dusk

Here at the height of the day night change
The color of the sky is uncertain,
The sky depending in which direction
One's eye strains, each of its swatches a strange
.....

Bill Knott

Allegiances

It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.
.....

William Stafford

Romance Moderne

Tracks of rain and light linger in
the spongy greens of a nature whose
flickering mountain-bulging nearer,
ebbing back into the sun
.....

William Carlos Williams

Natural Progress

In all faith, we did our part:
generated punctually, prepared adequately,
ejected promptly,
and swam in the approved manner
.....

Ben Jonson

The Old Stockman's Lament

Wrap me up in me stockwhip and blanket,
And bury me deep down below,
Where this piffle and sham wonâ??t disgust me,
In the land where the coolibahs grow;
.....

Henry Lawson

Paul's Wife

to say to him,
'How is the wife, Paul?'- and he'd disappear.
Some said it was because be bad no wife,
And hated to be twitted on the subject;
.....

Robert Frost

Embrace Noir

I go back to the scene where the two men embrace
& grapple a handgun at stomach level between them.

They jerk around the apartment like that
.....

Nick Flynn

Don Juan: Canto The Ninth

Oh, Wellington! (or 'Villainton'--for Fame
Sounds the heroic syllables both ways;
France could not even conquer your great name,
But punn'd it down to this facetious phrase-
.....

George Gordon Byron

A Plagued Journey

There is no warning rattle at the door
nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards.
Safe in the dark prison, I know that
light slides over
.....

Maya Angelou

Seal Yourself Away From Me

We were in a gargantuan cathedral
When it was time
To say Christ's Peace
You took my hand in yours
.....

Rose Marie Juan Austin

The Laws Of Motion

The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away
.....

Nikki Giovanni

Eureka - A Prose Poem (an Essay On The Material And Spiritual Universe)

It is with humility really unassumed, it is with a sentiment even of awe, that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn, the most comprehensive, the most difficult, the most august.

What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity -- sufficiently sublime in their simplicity, for the mere enunciation of my theme?

.....

Edgar Allan Poe

A Kind Of Villanelle

I will have been walking away:
no matter what direction I intended,
at that moment, I will have been walking

.....

Joyce Sutphen

Stanzas In Meditation: Stanza Xv

Should they may be they might if they delight
In why they must see it be there not only necessarily
But which they might in which they might
For which they might delight if they look there
.....

Gertrude Stein

A Problem In Dynamics

An inextensible heavy chain
Lies on a smooth horizontal plane,
An impulsive force is applied at A,
Required the initial motion of K.
.....

James Clerk Maxwell

Don Juan - Canto The Tenth.

When Newton saw an apple fall, he found
In that slight startle from his contemplation -
'T is said (for I 'll not answer above ground
For any sage's creed or calculation) -
.....

George Gordon Byron

Four Quartets 2: East Coker

I

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
.....

T. S. Eliot

The Iliad: Book 20

Thus, then, did the Achaeans arm by their ships round you, O son
of Peleus, who were hungering for battle; while the Trojans over
against them armed upon the rise of the plain.
Meanwhile Jove from the top of many-delled Olympus, bade Themis
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 12

“After we were clear of the river Oceanus, and had got out into
the open sea, we went on till we reached the Aeaean island where there
is dawn and sunrise as in other places. We then drew our ship on to
the sands and got out of her on to the shore, where we went to sleep
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 15

But Minerva went to the fair city of Lacedaemon to tell Ulysses' son
that he was to return at once. She found him and Pisistratus
sleeping in the forecourt of Menelaus's house; Pisistratus was fast
asleep, but Telemachus could get no rest all night for thinking of his
.....

Homer

The Death Of A Soldier

Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.

.....

Wallace Stevens

The American Way

1
I am a great American
I am almost nationalistic about it!
I love America like a madness!
.....

Gregory Corso