Home » Famous Poems » Best » Addict

Best Famous Addict Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Addict poems. This is a select list of the best famous Addict poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Addict poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of addict poems.

Search and read the best famous Addict poems, articles about Addict poems, poetry blogs, or anything else Addict poem related using the PoetrySoup search engine at the top of the page.

Church Going

Once i am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting seats and stone 
and little books; sprawlings of flowers cut
For Sunday brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense musty unignorable silence 
Brewed God knows how long.
 Hatless I take off
My cylce-clips in awkward revrence 

Move forward run my hand around the font.

From where i stand the roof looks almost new--
Cleaned or restored? someone would know: I don't.

Mounting the lectern I peruse a few
hectoring large-scale verses and pronouce
Here endeth much more loudly than I'd meant
The echoes snigger briefly.
 Back at the door
I sign the book donate an Irish sixpence 
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.


Yet stop I did: in fact I often do 
And always end much at a loss like this 
Wondering what to look for; wondering too
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show 
Their parchment plate and pyx in locked cases 
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or after dark will dubious women come
To make their children touvh a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games in riddles seemingly at random;
But superstition like belief must die 
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass weedy pavement brambles butress sky.


A shape less recognisable each week 
A purpose more obscure.
 I wonder who
Will be the last the very last to seek
This place for whta it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber randy for antique 
Or Christmas-addict counting on a whiff
Of grown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative 

Bored uninformed knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation--marriage and birth 
And death and thoughts of these--for which was built
This special shell? For though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth 
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is 
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet 
Are recognisd and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete 
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious 
And gravitating with it to this ground 
Which he once heard was proper to grow wise in 
If only that so many dead lie round.


1955

Written by Margaret Atwood |

You Take My Hand

 You take my hand and
I'm suddenly in a bad movie,
it goes on and on and 
why am I fascinated

We waltz in slow motion
through an air stale with aphrodisms
we meet behind the endless ptted palms
you climb through the wrong windows

Other people are leaving
but I always stay till the end
I paid my money, I
want to see what happens.


In chance bathtubs I have to 
peel you off me
in the form of smoke and melted
celluloid
 Have to face it I'm
finally an addict,
the smell of popcorn and worn plush
lingers for weeks

Written by Anne Sexton |

The Addict

 Sleepmonger,
deathmonger,
with capsules in my palms each night,
eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles
I make arrangements for a pint-sized journey.

I'm the queen of this condition.

I'm an expert on making the trip
and now they say I'm an addict.

Now they ask why.

WHY!

Don't they know that I promised to die!
I'm keeping in practice.

I'm merely staying in shape.

The pills are a mother, but better,
every color and as good as sour balls.

I'm on a diet from death.


Yes, I admit
it has gotten to be a bit of a habit-
blows eight at a time, socked in the eye,
hauled away by the pink, the orange,
the green and the white goodnights.

I'm becoming something of a chemical
mixture.

that's it!
My supply
of tablets
has got to last for years and years.

I like them more than I like me.

It's a kind of marriage.

It's a kind of war where I plant bombs inside
of myself.

Yes
I try
to kill myself in small amounts,
an innocuous occupation.

Actually I'm hung up on it.

But remember I don't make too much noise.

And frankly no one has to lug me out
and I don't stand there in my winding sheet.

I'm a little buttercup in my yellow nightie
eating my eight loaves in a row
and in a certain order as in
the laying on of hands
or the black sacrament.

It's a ceremony
but like any other sport
it's full of rules.

It's like a musical tennis match where
my mouth keeps catching the ball.

Then I lie on; my altar
elevated by the eight chemical kisses.

What a lay me down this is
with two pink, two orange,
two green, two white goodnights.

Fee-fi-fo-fum-
Now I'm borrowed.

Now I'm numb.

Written by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden |

On the Circuit

Among pelagian travelers,
Lost on their lewd conceited way
To Massachusetts, Michigan,
Miami or L.
A.
,
 An airborne instrument I sit,
Predestined nightly to fulfill
Columbia-Giesen-Management's
Unfathomable will,
 By whose election justified,
I bring my gospel of the Muse
To fundamentalists, to nuns,
to Gentiles and to Jews,
 And daily, seven days a week,
Before a local sense has jelled,
From talking-site to talking-site
Am jet-or-prop-propelled.
 Though warm my welcome everywhere,
I shift so frequently, so fast,
I cannot now say where I was
The evening before last,
 Unless some singular event
Should intervene to save the place,
A truly asinine remark,
A soul-bewitching face,
 Or blessed encounter, full of joy,
Unscheduled on the Giesen Plan,
With, here, an addict of Tolkien,
There, a Charles Williams fan.
 Since Merit but a dunghill is,
I mount the rostrum unafraid:
Indeed, 'twere damnable to ask
If I am overpaid.
 Spirit is willing to repeat
Without a qualm the same old talk,
But Flesh is homesick for our snug
Apartment in New York.
 A sulky fifty-six, he finds
A change of mealtime utter hell,
Grown far too crotchety to like
A luxury hotel.
 The Bible is a goodly book
I always can peruse with zest,
But really cannot say the same
For Hilton's Be My Guest.
 Nor bear with equanimity
The radio in students' cars,
Muzak at breakfast, or--dear God!--
Girl-organists in bars.
 Then, worst of all, the anxious thought,
Each time my plane begins to sink
And the No Smoking sign comes on:
What will there be to drink?
Is this a milieu where I must
How grahamgreeneish! How infra dig!
Snatch from the bottle in my bag
An analeptic swig?
 Another morning comes: I see,
Dwindling below me on the plane,
The roofs of one more audience
I shall not see again.
 God bless the lot of them, although
I don't remember which was which:
God bless the U.
S.
A.
, so large,
So friendly, and so rich.

Written by Robert William Service |

Gignol

 Addict of Punch and Judy shows
 I was when I was small;
My kiddy laughter, I suppose,
 Rang louder than them all.

The Judge with banter I would bait,
 The Copper was a wretch;
But oh how I would hiss my hate
 For grim Jack Ketch.


Although a grandsire grey I still
 Love Punch and Judy shows,
And with my toddlers help to fill
 Enthusiastic rows.

How jolly is their mirth to see,
 And what a sigh they fetch,
When Punch begs to be shown and he
 Jerks up Jack Ketch.


Heigh ho! No more I watch the play;
 It is the audience
That gives me my delight today,--
 Such charm of innocence!
Immortal mimes! It seems to me,
 Could I re-live my span,
With gusto I would like to be
 A Punch and Judy Man.