Famous Aids Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Aids poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous aids poems. These examples illustrate what a famous aids poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Place for a Third

by Robert Frost
 Nothing to say to all those marriages!
She had made three herself to three of his.
The score was even for them, three to three.
But come to die she found she cared so much:
She thought of children in a burial row;
Three children in a burial row were sad.
One man's three women in a burial row
Somehow made her impatient with the man.
And...Read more of this...

Kinky

by Denise Duhamel
 They decide to exchange heads.
Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin 
over Ken's bulging neck socket. His wide jaw line jostles
atop his girlfriend's body, loosely,
like one of those novelty dogs
destined to gaze from the back windows of cars.
The two dolls chase each other around the orange Country Camper 
unsure what they'll do when they're within touching distance. 
Ken...Read more of this...

My Masters

by Robert William Service
 Of Poetry I've been accused,
But much more often I have not;
Oh, I have been so much amused
By those who've put me on the spot,
And measured me by rules above
Those I observe with equal love.

An artisan of verse am I,
Of simple sense and humble tone;
My Thesaurus is handy by,
A rhyming lexicon I own;
Without them I am ill at ease -
What...Read more of this...

Scars on Paper

by Marilyn Hacker
 An unwrapped icon, too potent to touch,
she freed my breasts from the camp Empire dress.
Now one of them's the shadow of a breast
with a lost object's half-life, with as much
life as an anecdotal photograph:
me, Kim and Iva, all stripped to the waist,
hiking near Russian River on June first
'79: Iva's five-and-a-half.
While she was almost twenty, wearing black
T-shirts in D.C., where...Read more of this...

The Universal Republic

by Victor Hugo
 ("Temps futurs.") 
 
 {Part "Lux," Jersey, Dec. 16-20, 1853.} 


 O vision of the coming time! 
 When man has 'scaped the trackless slime 
 And reached the desert spring; 
 When sands are crossed, the sward invites 
 The worn to rest 'mid rare delights 
 And gratefully to sing. 
 
 E'en now the eye that's...Read more of this...

On Myselfe

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Good Heav'n, I thank thee, since it was design'd
I shou'd be fram'd, but of the weaker kinde,
That yet, my Soul, is rescu'd from the Love
Of all those Trifles, which their Passions move.
Pleasures, and Praise, and Plenty haue with me 
But their just value. If allow'd they be,
Freely, and thankfully as much I tast,
As will not reason, or Religion wast.
If...Read more of this...

The Fox And Huntsman

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 HARD 'tis on a fox's traces

To arrive, midst forest-glades;
Hopeless utterly the chase is,

If his flight the huntsman aids.

And so 'tis with many a wonder,

(Why A B make Ab in fact,)
Over which we gape and blunder,

And our head and brains distract.

 1821.*...Read more of this...

Sphincter

by Allen Ginsberg
 I hope my good old ******* holds out
60 years it's been mostly OK
Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation
 survived the altiplano hospital-- 
a little blood, no polyps, occasionally
a small hemorrhoid
active, eager, receptive to phallus
 coke bottle, candle, carrot
 banana & fingers -
Now AIDS makes it shy, but still
 eager to serve -
out with the dumps, in with the condom'd
...Read more of this...

The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos

by Vachel Lindsay
 The wide Pacific waters 
And the Atlantic meet.
With cries of joy they mingle, 
In tides of love they greet. 
Above the drowned ages 
A wind of wooing blows: — 
The red rose woos the lotos, 
The lotos woos the rose . . . 

The lotos conquered Egypt. 
The rose was loved in Rome. 
Great India crowned the lotos: 
(Britain...Read more of this...

Called Into Play

by A R Ammons
 Fall fell: so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads

and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to

find something to write about I haven't already
written away: I will have to stop short, look

down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should...Read more of this...

Worldly Place

by Matthew Arnold
 Even in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's ken
Who rates us if we peer outside our pen--
Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace!...Read more of this...

To King James

by Ben Jonson
XXXIV. ? TO KING JAMES.  (II)    Who would not be thy subject, JAMES, t'obey  A prince that rules by' example, more than sway ? Whose manners draw, more than thy powers constrain.  And in this short time of thy happiest reign, Hast purg'd thy realms, as we have now no cause  Left us of fear, but first our crimes,...Read more of this...

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