SATURDAY POEMS

I Don't Want You To Read My Poems And Remain The Same

I don't want you to read my poems and remain the same,
i want you to read my poems and get rabbies,
attacking every jack and jill smoking cannabis
i want you to read my poems and wonder if Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was true,
.....

Francis Ngwenya

I Miss You

Where are you my darling
I tried calling out your name but I met no reponse
I tried reaching out to you but you are no where to be seen, honey
Where are you, I need you to set me free from these nightmares.
.....

Victor Okumu

Labor Day

Requiring something lovely on his arm
Took me to Stamford, Connecticut, a quasi-farm,
His family's; later picking up the mammoth
Girlfriend of Charlie, meanwhile trying to pawn me off
.....

Louise Gluck

Brass Spittoons

Clean the spittoons, boy.
Detroit,
Chicago,
Atlantic City,
.....

Langston Hughes

Holiday

There is a party at the bar,
Life is too short.
Only people with tall ideas cope with it.
Yes i have a course outline with an assignment on it.
.....

Blessings Mitembo

Metempsychosis

SUDDENLY to become John Benbow, walking down William Street
With a tin trunk and a five-pound note, looking for a place to eat,
And a peajacket the colour of a shark's behind
That a Jew might buy in the morning. . . .
.....

Kenneth Slessor

The Cotter's Saturday Night

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT AIKEN, ESQ.

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
.....

Robert Burns

The Trash Men

here they come
these guys
grey truck
radio playing
.....

Charles Bukowski

Banjo Dog Variations

Tramps on the road: floating clouds. OLD CHINESE POEM

1

.....

Donald Justice

The Skokie Theater

Twelve years old and lovesick, bumbling
and terrified for the first time in my life,
but strangely hopeful, too, and stunned,
definitely stunned-I wanted to cry,
.....

Edward Hirsch

Captain Reece

Of all the ships upon the blue,
No ship contained a better crew
Than that of worthy CAPTAIN REECE,
Commanding of THE MANTELPIECE.
.....

William Schwenck Gilbert

Jerusalem

I wept until my tears were dry
I prayed until the candles flickered
I knelt until the floor creaked
I asked about Mohammed and Christ
.....

Nizar Qabbani

From The Top Of The Stairs

Of course
those who are standing at the top of the stairs
know
they know everything
.....

Zbigniew Herbert

Report From Paradise

In paradise the work week is fixed at thirty hours
salaries are higher prices steadily go down
manual labour is not tiring (because of reduced gravity)
chopping wood is no harder than typing
.....

Zbigniew Herbert

The Wreck Of The Deutschland

To the
happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns
exiles by the Falk Laws
drowned between midnight and morning of
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Confirmation

He was a poet who wrote clever verses,
And folks said he had a fine poetical taste;
But his father, a practical farmer, accused him
Of letting the strength of his arm go to waste.
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Week-end

I
The train! The twleve o'clock for paradise.
Hurry, or it will try to creep away.
Out in the country every one is wise:
.....

Harold Monro

Bilbea

BILBEA, I was in Babylon on Saturday night.
I saw nothing of you anywhere.
I was at the old place and the other girls were there, but no Bilbea.

.....

Carl Sandburg

Crutches

it's not the crutches we decry
it's the need to move forward
though we haven't the strength

.....

Nikki Giovanni

Ice Handler

I know an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with
pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-
box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,
.....

Carl Sandburg

The Right To Grief

To Certain Poets About to Die

Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
.....

Carl Sandburg

Work

When I am busying about,
Sewing on buttons, tapes, and strings,
Hanging the week's wet washing out
Or ironing the children's things,
.....

E. (edith) Nesbit

Sick

Sick 'I cannot go to school today,'
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
'I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
.....

Shel Silverstein

Work

WHEN I am busying about,
Sewing on buttons, tapes, and strings,
Hanging the week's wet washing out
Or ironing the children's things,
.....

Edith Nesbit

Mary

The angel of self-discipline, her guardian
Since she first knew and had to go away
From home that spring to have her child with strangers,
Sustained her, till the vanished boy next door
.....

Edgar Bowers

The Land Of The Exile

Mother, the light has grown grey in the sky; I do not know what
the time is.
There is no fun in my play, so I have come to you. It is
Saturday, our holiday.
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

Saturday Night In The Parthenon

Tiny green birds skate over the surface of the room.
A naked girl prepares a basin with steaming water,
And in the corner away from the hearth, the red wheels
Of an up-ended chariot slowly turn.
.....

Kenneth Patchen

Cézanne

The Irish lady can say, that to-day is every day. Caesar can say that
every day is to-day and they say that every day is as they say.
In this way we have a place to stay and he was not met because
he was settled to stay. When I said settled I meant settled to stay.
.....

Gertrude Stein

Late March

Saturday morning in late March.
I was alone and took a long walk,
though I also carried a book
of the Alone, which companioned me.
.....

Edward Hirsch

The Saturday Night Song

Hooray, the echo will resound throughout the wide square,
When a sincere drunkard's song emanates from my throat;
Tonight I'll be lapping up a smoky pub's atmosphere,
I'm bloody well going to get sloshed, buzzed and somewhere float.
.....

Julian Tuwim

Hope

The spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.
The week is dealt out like a hand
That children pick up card by card.
One keeps getting the same hand.
.....

Randall Jarrell

Zone

At last you're tired of this elderly world

Shepherdess O Eiffel Tower this morning the bridges are bleating

.....

Guillaume Apollinaire

If The Advertising Man Had Been Gilbert

Never mind the slippery wet street--
The tire with a thousand claws will hold you.
Stop as quickly as you will--
Those thousand claws grip the road like a vise.
.....

Franklin Pierce Adams

Give Your Heart To The Hawks

1 he apples hung until a wind at the equinox,

That heaped the beach with black weed, filled the dry grass

.....

Robinson Jeffers

In Memory Of Radio

Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)
.....

Amiri Baraka

Saturday Song

They talk about gardens of roses,
And moonlight over the sea,
And mountains and snow
And sunsetty glow,
.....

E. (edith) Nesbit

Saturday Song

They talk about gardens of roses,
And moonlight over the sea,
And mountains and snow
And sunsetty glow,
.....

Edith Nesbit

Old Town Types No. 13 - Larrikin Luke

Luke Gale, the larrikin lad, dwelt in Larrikin Lane,
A low street, a by-street, right at the edge of the town;
King of the boys and hobbledehoys - a vulgar youth, and vain,
Winning from all respectable folk a very respectable frown.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Yeats Died Saturday In France

Yeats died Saturday in France.
Freedom from his animal
Has come at last in alien Nice,
His heart beat separate from his will:
.....

Delmore Schwartz

Saturday's Child

Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black racoon--
For implements of battle.
.....

Countee Cullen

The Bothie Of Tober-na-vuolich - Viii

A Long-Vacation Pastoral


VIII
.....

Arthur Hugh Clough

The Sins Of Kalamazoo

THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.

The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab.

.....

Carl Sandburg

They Will Say

Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
.....

Carl Sandburg

The Shadow

Paul Jannes was working very late,
For this watch must be done by eight
To-morrow or the Cardinal
Would certainly be vexed. Of all
.....

Amy Lowell

Saturday

Now with the almost finished task make haste.
So near the night thou hast no time to waste.
Post up accounts, and let thy Soul's eyes look
For flaws and errors in Life's ledger-book.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Westland Row

Every Sunday there's a throng
Of pretty girls, who trot along
In a pious, breathless state
(They are nearly always late)
.....

James Stephens

Saturday Paseo: Adelina

Oranges
do not grow in the sea
neither is there love in Sevilla.
You in Dark and the I the sun that's hot,
.....

Federico Garcà­a Lorca

Eternal

Iâ??m in the daysâ?? embracing limits,
Where even skies are ever gray,
Look through the ages, live in minutes,
And wait for Holy Saturday;
.....

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev

Black Saturday

They say a touch of spring is in the air;
They say the wattle trees with bloom are gay;
They say each garden now begins to wear
(Not that I care)
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Clare Market

In the market of Clare, so cheery the glare
Of the shops and the booths of the tradespeople there;
That I take a delight on a Saturday night
In walking that way and in viewing the sight.
.....

Eugene Field