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Famous Alcohol Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...seless years' extinguished mirth and laughter
Oppress me like some hazy morning-after.
But sadness of days past, as alcohol -
The more it age, the stronger grip the soul.
My course is dull. The future's troubled ocean
Forebodes me toil, misfortune and commotion.

But no, my friends, I do not wish to leave;
I'd rather live, to ponder and to grieve -
And I shall have my share of delectation
Amid all care, distress and agitation:
Time and again I'll savor harmony...Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander



...of a bottle of Redbreast. Had Hawthorne been a Gael,
I insist, the scarlet A on Hester Prynne
would have stood for "Alcohol."

This must be the same truck whose taillights burn
so dimly, as if caked with dirt,
three or four hundred yards along the boreen

(a diminutive form of the Gaelic bóthar, "a road,"
from bó, "a cow," and thar
meaning, in this case, something like "athwart,"

"boreen" has entered English "through the air"
despite the protestations of the O.E....Read more of this...
by Muldoon, Paul
...gay:
 Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. 
 It's coming through a crack in the wall,
 on a visionary flood of alcohol;
 from the staggering account
 of the Sermon on the Mount
 which I don't pretend to understand at all.
 It's coming from the silence
 on the dock of the bay,
 from the brave, the bold, the battered
 heart of Chevrolet:
 Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. 
 It's coming from the sorrow on the street
 the holy places where the races meet;...Read more of this...
by Cohen, Leonard
...

214

A taste a liquor never brewed—
From Tankards scooped in Pearl—
Not all the Vats on the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of Air—am I—
And Debauchee of Dew—
Reeling—thro endless summer days—
From inns of Molten Blue—

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out the Foxglove's door—
When Butterflies—renounce their "drams"—
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats—
And Saints—to windows run—
To see the little Tippler
Leanin...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...Down horse drink gentleman alcohol 
Ask gentleman what place go 
Gentleman say not achieve wish 
Return lie south mountain near 
Still go nothing more ask 
White cloud not exhaust time 


Dismounting, I offer my friend a cup of wine, 
I ask what place he is headed to. 
He says he has not achieved his aims, 
Is retiring to the southern hills. 
Now go, and ask me nothing more, 
...Read more of this...
by Wei, Wang



...i Plains -- Otsego County
 farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha's a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana --
coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street --
Where does it come from, where does it go forever?

 May 1996...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...r a short while, we create pleasure
which almost seems real.
So in the bar the day before yesterday -- the merciful alcohol
was also helping much --
I had a perfectly erotic half-hour.
And it seems to me that you understood,
and stayed somewhat longer on purpose.
This was very necessary. Because
for all the imagination and the wizard alcohol,
I needed to see your lips as well,
I needed to have your body close....Read more of this...
by Cavafy, Constantine P
...Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinkin...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...' Club;
Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died
By falling from a high stool in a pub ...

But showed no trace of alcohol
At the autopsy, privately performed --
Tissue preserved -- the pure mind
Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed.

Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels;
Headlam for uplift; Image impartially imbued
With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore and the Church.
So spoke the author of "The Dorian Mood",

M. Verog, out of step with the decade,...Read more of this...
by Pound, Ezra
...he sea tore at the pleasure-boats in a frenzy.

Your hand balanced, with its steady heat,
the wavering tepidness of alcohol. The gardens
came at me from far away through your skirt.
My high-tide mark rose to the level of your breasts.

Carpets, like tentacles, wriggling down to the strand,
attracted passers-by to the mouth of the clamor.
With lights and curtains, above the tedium
the bedrooms murmured in the grand hotels.

There are dark moments when o...Read more of this...
by Graves, Robert
...he sea tore at the pleasure-boats in a frenzy.

Your hand balanced, with its steady heat,
the wavering tepidness of alcohol. The gardens
came at me from far away through your skirt.
My high-tide mark rose to the level of your breasts.

Carpets, like tentacles, wriggling down to the strand,
attracted passers-by to the mouth of the clamor.
With lights and curtains, above the tedium
the bedrooms murmured in the grand hotels.

There are dark moments when o...Read more of this...
by Guillen, Rafael
...yond the valley, mountains and Ponderosa pines,
Beyond the mountains, desert and sheep.

When I couldn't do without alcohol, I drove myself on alcohol,
When I couldn't do without cigarettes and coffee, I drove myself
On cigarettes and coffee.
I was courageous. Industrious. Nearly a model of virtue.
But that is good for nothing.

I feel a pain.
not here. Even I don't know.
many islands and continents,
words, bazaars, wooden flutes,
Or too mu...Read more of this...
by Milosz, Czeslaw
...nquired. "As real as Oxfam ever is

For one pound fifty." The vast ballroom was growing misty

And blurred with alcohol I’ve never had the taste for.

"**** off" a forty-plus dyed blonde said half in jest.

So I chose the only Asian girl in Squares with hair like jet

And danced with her five minutes centre stage –

I’ve lost all inhibitions in old age. A Malaysian architecture

Student invited me to sit and get my breath back

"Le Corbusier described a ho...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...erflights to sound filled pockets in space.
On neuro-corners of striped brains & desperate electro-surgeons.
On alcohol corners of pointless discussion & historical hangovers.
On television corners of cornflakes & rockwells impotent America.
On university corners of tailored intellect & greek letter openers.
On military corners of megathon deaths & universal anesthesia.
On religious corners of theological limericks and
On radio corners of century-long ...Read more of this...
by Kaufman, Bob
...only qualification.

There was the ‘shaving incident’ at school, which

Made him ready to walk out at fifteen, the alcohol

Defences at Oxford which shut us out then petered out

During the six years in India, studying Bengali at Shantiniketan.

He tottered from the plane, penniless and unshaven,

To hide away in the seediest bedsit Beeston could boast

Where night turned to day and vaguely he applied 

For jobs as clerk and court usher and drank in pubs with yobs.Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...e next stool, like a bird on the next island,

took a sip from his Scotch and soda. The guy liked the sound

of the alcohol in his drink. He put the glass back on the bar.

 "That's no problem, " he said to Mr. Norris. "The best

thing I know for remembering the names of children from

previous marriages, is to go out camping, try a little trout

fishing. Trout fishing is one of the best things in the world

for remembering children's names."

 "Is...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard
...eng morning rain moisten light dust 
Visitor house green green willow colour new 
Urge gentleman further finish one cup alcohol 
West outside Yang Pass no friend person 


At Weicheng morning rain has dampened light dust, 
By the hostel, the willows are all fresh and green. 
I urge my friend to drink a last cup of wine, 
West of Yang Pass, there will be no friends....Read more of this...
by Wei, Wang
...storm-centre breezed the gallant Major Brown.
And at the apparation, whith its glass eye and plus-fours,
From fifty alcoholic throats responded fifty roars.
With shouts of stark amazement and with whoops of sheer delight,
They surged around the stranger, but the first was Deacon White.
"We welcome you," he cried aloud, "to this the Great White Land.
The Artic Brotherhood is proud to grip you by the hand.
Yea, sportsman of the bull-dog breed, from trails of...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...br>" She had a temper that came close to insanity, she had a temper that some
call insanity. Her father had died of alcohol and her mother had run off leaving the
girls alone. The girls went to a relative who placed them in a convent. The convent had
been an unhappy place, more for Cass than the sisters. The girls were jealous of Cass and
Cass fought most of them. She had razor marks all along her left arm from defending
herself in two fights. There wa...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...have so much to comprehend, too much for any mortal,

The madness of youth, so fierce, so compulsive,

The cocktails of alcohol and drugs, the quarrels with knives and guns

Entered into as lightly as love was once with us.



Our generation awaits the taste of death

With none of the anticipated solace,

No children’s children visiting in spite of the spare room

Stacked with toys, with shelves of dusty books, Baum’s ‘Magical Land of Oz’

Its spine laid bare, Mombi the w...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

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