PROBLEM POEMS

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The Wood-cutter

The sky is like an envelope,
One of those blue official things;
And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
.....

Robert William Service
Scars Have Past

Every day you see your Scars,
The scars that define your past,
The scars that define what you are,
The scars that will interfere with your future,
.....
Richmond Gellez

Richmond Gellez
Blindfolded Mind

Minds are deluded but
Not from beginning
Ignorance makes it, however
Essences of mind is crystal pure.
.....
Norbu Dorji

Norbu Dorji
Ordinary Man

I have had dreams, I have set goals
Ive achieved some, had some dislodged and yet to achieve many.
I believe in myself, I believe in others
I know I’m not perfect, I don’t expect others to be either
.....
Bhekisipho Nyathi

Bhekisipho Nyathi
Lost Ln My Loneliness

loneliness, oh loneliness,
There is one word I want to say
But who to listen to me is my problem.
People say I have nothing important to say
.....
Borklo Solomon

Borklo Solomon
O Heart Just Go To Hell

where do I go from here,
where do I hide?
this half heart,
where can I use it (that is, how do I love with it.)
.....
Pallavi Deepchand

Pallavi Deepchand
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

Priyadarshini Goel
La Familia

My family is where my heart is
I’ll do everything to keep them at ease
Their sweet smile can make my day
To be calm and to be lovely
.....
Mary Joy Antiola

Mary Joy Antiola
Effort

He brought me his report card from the teacher and he said
He wasn't very proud of it and sadly bowed his head.
He was excellent in reading, but arithmetic, was fair,
And I noticed there were several 'unsatisfactorys' there;
.....
Edgar Albert Guest

Edgar Albert Guest
Monna Innominata: A Sonnet Of Sonnets

1

Lo dì che han detto a' dolci amici addio. (Dante)
Amor, con quanto sforzo oggi mi vinci! (Petrarca)
.....
Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti
With All Thy Gifts, America

With all thy gifts, America,
(Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,)
Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee, With these, and like of these, vouchsafed to thee,
What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving;)
.....
Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman
Gas

my grandmother had a serious gas
problem.
we only saw her on Sunday.
she'd sit down to dinner
.....

Charles Bukowski
Full Flight

I'm in a plane that will not be flown into a building.
It's a SAAB 340, seats 40, has two engines with propellers
is why I think of beanies, those hats that would spin
a young head into the clouds. The plane is red and loud
.....

Bob Hicok
The Wrathful

O pupils of Gaza . .
Teach us . . .
A little of what you have
For we have forgotten . . .
.....

Nizar Qabbani
Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages

(The Dry Salvages-presumably les trois sauvages
- is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E.
coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced
to rhyme with assuages. Groaner: a whistling buoy.)
.....
T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot
Why I Went To The Foot

Was ever a maiden so worried?
I'll admit I am partial to Jim,
For Jimmie has promised to wed me
When I'm old enough to wed him.
.....

Ellis Parker Butler
Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem With Time

He reads my latest attempt at a poem
and is silent for a long time, until it feels
like that night we waited for Apollo,
my mother wandering in and out of her bedroom, asking,
.....

Nick Flynn
Cadet Grey: Canto Ii

I

Where West Point crouches, and with lifted shield
Turns the whole river eastward through the pass;
.....
Bret Harte

Bret Harte
The Symphony

“O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The Time needs heart-'tis tired of head:
We're all for love,” the violins said.
“Of what avail the rigorous tale
.....
Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier
A Modern Proposal

(It has been said that the feminist movement is the true
solution of the mother-in-law problem.)


.....

Alice Duer Miller
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
The Problem

The Problem

The name of the bow is life, but its work is death.
â??The Fragments
.....

B H Fairchild
Kar Paunga Ya Nhi

Kar paunga ya nhi
Socha bahut par dar lagta hai
Ki kar paunga ya nhi
Aashaye bahut hai par dar lagta hai
.....
Nitin Goyal

Nitin Goyal
A Thought

It's strange, isn't it?
Just being...there,
No real feeling, no real....presence.
You're around loved ones,
.....
Ace Eastmond

Ace Eastmond
Thanksgiving

I remember the first time i saw her.
Those brown eyes, beautiful nose and smile.
She caught my attention,
Quickly, something inside me wanted to talk to her.
.....
Blessings Mitembo

Blessings Mitembo
Lamia

Part 1

Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,
.....
John Keats

John Keats
Our Pote

A pote is sure a goofy guy;
He ain't got guts like you or I
To tell the score;
He ain't goy gumption 'nuff to know
.....
Robert Service

Robert Service
Life

With the waves, it moves
With the seasons it changes
With my smile, it fades
With my time it leaves
.....
Fihaal

Fihaal
The Death Of Euclid

[”Euclid, we are told, is at last dead, after two thousand
years of an immortality that he never much
deserved.”-The Times Literary Supplement.]

.....
R. C. Lehmann

R. C. Lehmann
Stars Over The Dordogne

Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy
Picket of trees whose silhouette is darker
Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless.
The woods are a well. The stars drop silently.
.....

Sylvia Plath
Dust

Here is a problem, a wonder for all to see.
Look at this marvelous thing I hold in my hand!
This is a magic surprising, a mystery
Strange as a miracle, harder to understand.
.....
Celia Thaxter

Celia Thaxter
The Broken Drum

There is sorrow in the household;
There's a grief too hard to bear;
There's a little cheek that's tear-stained
There's a sobbing baby there.
.....
Edgar Albert Guest

Edgar Albert Guest
The Hoary Precedent

Mr. Pericles, M.P.,
In four-sixty-nine B.C.,
Outed Cimon at a general election;
Premier Cimon, thuswise ex-ed,
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
What We Need

We were settin' there an' smokin' of our pipes, discussin' things,
Like licker, votes for wimmin, an' the totterin'thrones o' kings,
When he ups an' strokes his whiskers with his hand an' says t'me:
'Changin' laws an' legislatures ain't, as fur as I can see,
.....
Edgar Albert Guest

Edgar Albert Guest
The Listener

Why, certainly. Let's listen to the cricket.
Oh, I'm quite keen. Test match, I understand.
At... What's that? Oh, Australia's at the wicket.
South Africa - a most intriguing land.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
Goading The Muse

this man used to be an
interesting writer,
he was able to say brisk and
refreshing things.
.....

Charles Bukowski
Unarmed Combat

In due course of course you will all be issued with
Your proper issue; but until tomorrow,
You can hardly be said to need it; and until that time,
We shall have unarmed combat. I shall teach you.
.....

Henry Reed
Don Juan: Canto The Seventeenth

The world is full of orphans: firstly, those
Who are so in the strict sense of the phrase
(But many a lonely tree the loftier grows
Than others crowded in the forest's maze);
.....

George Gordon Byron
On The Beach At Night

ON the beach, at night,
Stands a child, with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

.....
Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman
Workshop

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.
It gets me right away because I'm in a workshop now
so immediately the poem has my attention,
like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.
.....

Billy Collins
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
Let's Stop Discrimination

it has been more than five decades since we got our liberial government!
We have come so far as a nation,
But there is still a long way to go.
I can see the future is bright but somehow my vision is blurry.
.....
Blessings Mitembo

Blessings Mitembo
Low At My Problem Bending

69

Low at my problem bending,
Another problem comes-
.....
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
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
Poems - The New Edition - Preface

In two small volumes of Poems, published anonymously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the Poems which compose the present volume have already appeared. The rest are now published for the first time.

I have, in the present collection, omitted the Poem from which the volume published in 1852 took its title. I have done so, not because the subject of it was a Sicilian Greek born between two and three thousand years ago, although many persons would think this a sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient at least to indicate. What those who are familiar only with the great monuments of early Greek genius suppose to be its exclusive characteristics, have disappeared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared: the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet and of Faust.

.....
Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold
My Wheel Is In The Dark

10

My wheel is in the dark!
I cannot see a spoke
.....
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
The Ballad Of How Macpherson Held The Floor

Said President MacConnachie to Treasurer MacCall:
“We ought to have a piper for our next Saint Andrew's Ball.
Yon squakin' saxophone gives me the syncopated gripes.
I'm sick of jazz, I want to hear the skirling of the pipes.”
.....
Robert Service

Robert Service
The Glories Of The Present

WHAT of the glories after death,
When this frail form gives up its breath?
Why do we strive to understand
The Future when the Now's at hand?
.....
Edgar Albert Guest

Edgar Albert Guest
The Cremona Violin: Part 05

It was no easy matter to convince
Heinrich that it was finished. Hard to say
That though they could not meet (he saw her wince)
She still must keep the locket to allay
.....
Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell