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Best Famous Blues Poems

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

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Written by Maya Angelou | Create an image from this poem

Alone

 Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires With money they can't use Their wives run round like banshees Their children sing the blues They've got expensive doctors To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody No, nobody Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely I'll tell you what I know Storm clouds are gathering The wind is gonna blow The race of man is suffering And I can hear the moan, 'Cause nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.


Written by Charles Bukowski | Create an image from this poem

A Man

 George was lying in his trailer, flat on his back, watching a small portable T.
V.
His dinner dishes were undone, his breakfast dishes were undone, he needed a shave, and ash from his rolled cigarettes dropped onto his undershirt.
Some of the ash was still burning.
Sometimes the burning ash missed the undershirt and hit his skin, then he cursed, brushing it away.
There was a knock on the trailer door.
He got slowly to his feet and answered the door.
It was Constance.
She had a fifth of unopened whiskey in a bag.
"George, I left that son of a *****, I couldn't stand that son of a ***** anymore.
" "Sit down.
" George opened the fifth, got two glasses, filled each a third with whiskey, two thirds with water.
He sat down on the bed with Constance.
She took a cigarette out of her purse and lit it.
She was drunk and her hands trembled.
"I took his damn money too.
I took his damn money and split while he was at work.
You don't know how I've suffered with that son of a *****.
" " Lemme have a smoke," said George.
She handed it to him and as she leaned near, George put his arm around her, pulled her over and kissed her.
"You son of a *****," she said, "I missed you.
" "I miss those good legs of yours , Connie.
I've really missed those good legs.
" "You still like 'em?" "I get hot just looking.
" "I could never make it with a college guy," said Connie.
"They're too soft, they're milktoast.
And he kept his house clean.
George , it was like having a maid.
He did it all.
The place was spotless.
You could eat beef stew right off the crapper.
He was antisceptic, that's what he was.
" "Drink up, you'll feel better.
" "And he couldn't make love.
" "You mean he couldn't get it up?" "Oh he got it up, he got it up all the time.
But he didn't know how to make a woman happy, you know.
He didn't know what to do.
All that money, all that education, he was useless.
" "I wish I had a college education.
" "You don't need one.
You have everything you need, George.
" "I'm just a flunkey.
All the **** jobs.
" "I said you have everything you need, George.
You know how to make a woman happy.
" "Yeh?" "Yes.
And you know what else? His mother came around! His mother! Two or three times a week.
And she'd sit there looking at me, pretending to like me but all the time she was treating me like I was a whore.
Like I was a big bad whore stealing her son away from her! Her precious Wallace! Christ! What a mess!" "He claimed he loved me.
And I'd say, 'Look at my pussy, Walter!' And he wouldn't look at my pussy.
He said, 'I don't want to look at that thing.
' That thing! That's what he called it! You're not afraid of my pussy, are you, George?" "It's never bit me yet.
" "But you've bit it, you've nibbled it, haven't you George?" "I suppose I have.
" "And you've licked it , sucked it?" "I suppose so.
" "You know damn well, George, what you've done.
" "How much money did you get?" "Six hundred dollars.
" "I don't like people who rob other people, Connie.
" "That's why you're a fucking dishwasher.
You're honest.
But he's such an ass, George.
And he can afford the money, and I've earned it.
.
.
him and his mother and his love, his mother-love, his clean l;ittle wash bowls and toilets and disposal bags and breath chasers and after shave lotions and his little hard-ons and his precious love-making.
All for himself, you understand, all for himself! You know what a woman wants, George.
" "Thanks for the whiskey, Connie.
Lemme have another cigarette.
" George filled them up again.
"I missed your legs, Connie.
I've really missed those legs.
I like the way you wear those high heels.
They drive me crazy.
These modern women don't know what they're missing.
The high heel shapes the calf, the thigh, the ass; it puts rythm into the walk.
It really turns me on!" "You talk like a poet, George.
Sometimes you talk like that.
You are one hell of a dishwasher.
" "You know what I'd really like to do?" "What?" "I'd like to whip you with my belt on the legs, the ass, the thighs.
I'd like to make you quiver and cry and then when you're quivering and crying I'd slam it into you pure love.
" "I don't want that, George.
You've never talked like that to me before.
You've always done right with me.
" "Pull your dress up higher.
" "What?" "Pull your dress up higher, I want to see more of your legs.
" "You like my legs, don't you, George?" "Let the light shine on them!" Constance hiked her dress.
"God christ ****," said George.
"You like my legs?" "I love your legs!" Then george reached across the bed and slapped Constance hard across the face.
Her cigarette flipped out of her mouth.
"what'd you do that for?" "You fucked Walter! You fucked Walter!" "So what the hell?" "So pull your dress up higher!" "No!" "Do what I say!" George slapped again, harder.
Constance hiked her skirt.
"Just up to the panties!" shouted George.
"I don't quite want to see the panties!" "Christ, george, what's gone wrong with you?" "You fucked Walter!" "George, I swear, you've gone crazy.
I want to leave.
Let me out of here, George!" "Don't move or I'll kill you!" "You'd kill me?" "I swear it!" George got up and poured himself a shot of straight whiskey, drank it, and sat down next to Constance.
He took the cigarette and held it against her wrist.
She screamed.
HE held it there, firmly, then pulled it away.
"I'm a man , baby, understand that?" "I know you're a man , George.
" "Here, look at my muscles!" george sat up and flexed both of his arms.
"Beautiful, eh ,baby? Look at that muscle! Feel it! Feel it!" Constance felt one of the arms, then the other.
"Yes, you have a beautiful body, George.
" "I'm a man.
I'm a dishwasher but I'm a man, a real man.
" "I know it, George.
" "I'm not the milkshit you left.
" "I know it.
" "And I can sing, too.
You ought to hear my voice.
" Constance sat there.
George began to sing.
He sang "Old man River.
" Then he sang "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen.
" He sang "The St.
Louis Blues.
" He sasng "God Bless America," stopping several times and laughing.
Then he sat down next to Constance.
He said, "Connie, you have beautiful legs.
" He asked for another cigarette.
He smoked it, drank two more drinks, then put his head down on Connie's legs, against the stockings, in her lap, and he said, "Connie, I guess I'm no good, I guess I'm crazy, I'm sorry I hit you, I'm sorry I burned you with that cigarette.
" Constance sat there.
She ran her fingers through George's hair, stroking him, soothing him.
Soon he was asleep.
She waited a while longer.
Then she lifted his head and placed it on the pillow, lifted his legs and straightened them out on the bed.
She stood up, walked to the fifth, poured a jolt of good whiskey in to her glass, added a touch of water and drank it sown.
She walked to the trailer door, pulled it open, stepped out, closed it.
She walked through the backyard, opened the fence gate, walked up the alley under the one o'clock moon.
The sky was clear of clouds.
The same skyful of clouds was up there.
She got out on the boulevard and walked east and reached the entrance of The Blue Mirror.
She walked in, and there was Walter sitting alone and drunk at the end of the bar.
She walked up and sat down next to him.
"Missed me, baby?" she asked.
Walter looked up.
He recognized her.
He didn't answer.
He looked at the bartender and the bartender walked toward them They all knew eachother.
Written by Adrienne Rich | Create an image from this poem

Victory

 Something spreading underground won't speak to us
under skin won't declare itself
not all life-forms want dialogue with the
machine-gods in their drama hogging down
the deep bush clear-cutting refugees
from ancient or transient villages into
our opportunistic fervor to search
 crazily for a host a lifeboat

Suddenly instead of art we're eyeing
organisms traced and stained on cathedral transparencies
cruel blues embroidered purples succinct yellows
a beautiful tumor

•

I guess you're not alone I fear you're alone
There's, of course, poetry:
awful bridge rising over naked air: I first
took it as just a continuation of the road: 
"a masterpiece of engineering
praised, etc.
" then on the radio: "incline too steep for ease of, etc.
" Drove it nonetheless because I had to this being how— So this is how I find you: alive and more • As if (how many conditionals must we suffer?) I'm driving to your side —an intimate collusion— packed in the trunk my bag of foils for fencing with pain glasses of varying spectrum for sun or fog or sun-struck rain or bitterest night my sack of hidden poetries, old glue shredding from their spines my time exposure of the Leonids over Joshua Tree As if we're going to win this O because • If you have a sister I am not she nor your mother nor you my daughter nor are we lovers or any kind of couple except in the intensive care of poetry and death's master plan architecture-in-progress draft elevations of a black-and-white mosaic dome the master left on your doorstep with a white card in black calligraphy: Make what you will of this As if leaving purple roses • If (how many conditionals must we suffer?) I tell you a letter from the master is lying on my own doorstep glued there with leaves and rain and I haven't bent to it yet if I tell you I surmise he writes differently to me: Do as you will, you have had your life many have not signing it in his olden script: Meister aus Deutschland • In coldest Europe end of that war frozen domes iron railings frozen stoves lit in the streets memory banks of cold the Nike of Samothrace on a staircase wings in blazing backdraft said to me : : to everyone she met Displaced, amputated never discount me Victory indented in disaster striding at the head of stairs for Tory Dent
Written by Cornelius Eady | Create an image from this poem

Im A Fool To Love You

 Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell you, if she could, About her life with my father, A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.
She would tell you about the choices A young black woman faces.
Is falling in love with some man A deal with the devil In blue terms, the tongue we use When we don't want nuance To get in the way, When we need to talk straight.
My mother chooses my father After choosing a man Who was, as we sing it, Of no account.
This man made my father look good, That's how bad it was.
He made my father seem like an island In the middle of a stormy sea, He made my father look like a rock.
And is the blues the moment you realize You exist in a stacked deck, You look in a mirror at your young face, The face my sister carries, And you know it's the only leverage You've got.
Does this create a hurt that whispers How you going to do? Is the blues the moment You shrug your shoulders And agree, a girl without money Is nothing, dust To be pushed around by any old breeze.
Compared to this, My father seems, briefly, To be a fire escape.
This is the way the blues works Its sorry wonders, Makes trouble look like A feather bed, Makes the wrong man's kisses A healing.
Written by Rita Dove | Create an image from this poem

The Bistro Styx

 She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her.
What's this, I thought, lifting a hand until she nodded and started across the parquet; that's when I saw she was dressed all in gray, from a kittenish cashmere skirt and cowl down to the graphite signature of her shoes.
"Sorry I'm late," she panted, though she wasn't, sliding into the chair, her cape tossed off in a shudder of brushed steel.
We kissed.
Then I leaned back to peruse my blighted child, this wary aristocratic mole.
"How's business?" I asked, and hazarded a motherly smile to keep from crying out: Are you content to conduct your life as a cliché and, what's worse, an anachronism, the brooding artist's demimonde? Near the rue Princesse they had opened a gallery cum souvenir shop which featured fuzzy off-color Monets next to his acrylics, no doubt, plus beared African drums and the occasional miniature gargoyle from Notre Dame the Great Artist had carved at breakfast with a pocket knife.
"Tourists love us.
The Parisians, of course"-- she blushed--"are amused, though not without a certain admiration .
.
.
" The Chateaubriand arrived on a bone-white plate, smug and absolute in its fragrant crust, a black plug steaming like the heart plucked from the chest of a worthy enemy; one touch with her fork sent pink juices streaming.
"Admiration for what?"Wine, a bloody Pinot Noir, brought color to her cheeks.
"Why, the aplomb with which we've managed to support our Art"--meaning he'd convinced her to pose nude for his appalling canvases, faintly futuristic landscapes strewn with carwrecks and bodies being chewed by rabid cocker spaniels.
"I'd like to come by the studio," I ventured, "and see the new stuff.
" "Yes, if you wish .
.
.
"A delicate rebuff before the warning: "He dresses all in black now.
Me, he drapes in blues and carmine-- and even though I think it's kinda cute, in company I tend toward more muted shades.
" She paused and had the grace to drop her eyes.
She did look ravishing, spookily insubstantial, a lipstick ghost on tissue, or as if one stood on a fifth-floor terrace peering through a fringe of rain at Paris' dreaming chimney pots, each sooty issue wobbling skyward in an ecstatic oracular spiral.
"And he never thinks of food.
I wish I didn't have to plead with him to eat.
.
.
.
"Fruit and cheese appeared, arrayed on leaf-green dishes.
I stuck with café crème.
"This Camembert's so ripe," she joked, "it's practically grown hair," mucking a golden glob complete with parsley sprig onto a heel of bread.
Nothing seemed to fill her up: She swallowed, sliced into a pear, speared each tear-shaped lavaliere and popped the dripping mess into her pretty mouth.
Nowhere the bright tufted fields, weighted vines and sun poured down out of the south.
"But are you happy?"Fearing, I whispered it quickly.
"What?You know, Mother"-- she bit into the starry rose of a fig-- "one really should try the fruit here.
" I've lost her, I thought, and called for the bill.


Written by Langston Hughes | Create an image from this poem

The Blues

 When the shoe strings break
On both your shoes
And you're in a hurry-
That's the blues.
When you go to buy a candy bar And you've lost the dime you had- Slipped through a hole in your pocket somewhere- That's the blues, too, and bad!
Written by Langston Hughes | Create an image from this poem

The Weary Blues

 Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
 I heard a ***** play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway .
.
.
He did a lazy sway .
.
.
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues! Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues! Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues! In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone I heard that ***** sing, that old piano moan-- "Ain't got nobody in all this world, Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin' And put ma troubles on the shelf.
" Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more-- "I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues And can't be satisfied-- I ain't happy no mo' And I wish that I had died.
" And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.
Written by Elizabeth Bishop | Create an image from this poem

Roosters

 At four o'clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first cock

just below
the gun-metal blue window
and immediately there is an echo

off in the distance,
then one from the backyard fence,
then one, with horrible insistence,

grates like a wet match 
from the broccoli patch,
flares,and all over town begins to catch.
Cries galore come from the water-closet door, from the dropping-plastered henhouse floor, where in the blue blur their rusting wives admire, the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare with stupid eyes while from their beaks there rise the uncontrolled, traditional cries.
Deep from protruding chests in green-gold medals dressed, planned to command and terrorize the rest, the many wives who lead hens' lives of being courted and despised; deep from raw throats a senseless order floats all over town.
A rooster gloats over our beds from rusty irons sheds and fences made from old bedsteads, over our churches where the tin rooster perches, over our little wooden northern houses, making sallies from all the muddy alleys, marking out maps like Rand McNally's: glass-headed pins, oil-golds and copper greens, anthracite blues, alizarins, each one an active displacement in perspective; each screaming, "This is where I live!" Each screaming "Get up! Stop dreaming!" Roosters, what are you projecting? You, whom the Greeks elected to shoot at on a post, who struggled when sacrificed, you whom they labeled "Very combative.
.
.
" what right have you to give commands and tell us how to live, cry "Here!" and "Here!" and wake us here where are unwanted love, conceit and war? The crown of red set on your little head is charged with all your fighting blood Yes, that excrescence makes a most virile presence, plus all that vulgar beauty of iridescence Now in mid-air by two they fight each other.
Down comes a first flame-feather, and one is flying, with raging heroism defying even the sensation of dying.
And one has fallen but still above the town his torn-out, bloodied feathers drift down; and what he sung no matter.
He is flung on the gray ash-heap, lies in dung with his dead wives with open, bloody eyes, while those metallic feathers oxidize.
St.
Peter's sin was worse than that of Magdalen whose sin was of the flesh alone; of spirit, Peter's, falling, beneath the flares, among the "servants and officers.
" Old holy sculpture could set it all together in one small scene, past and future: Christ stands amazed, Peter, two fingers raised to surprised lips, both as if dazed.
But in between a little cock is seen carved on a dim column in the travertine, explained by gallus canit; flet Petrus underneath it, There is inescapable hope, the pivot; yes, and there Peter's tears run down our chanticleer's sides and gem his spurs.
Tear-encrusted thick as a medieval relic he waits.
Poor Peter, heart-sick, still cannot guess those cock-a-doodles yet might bless, his dreadful rooster come to mean forgiveness, a new weathervane on basilica and barn, and that outside the Lateran there would always be a bronze cock on a porphyry pillar so the people and the Pope might see that event the Prince of the Apostles long since had been forgiven, and to convince all the assembly that "Deny deny deny" is not all the roosters cry.
In the morning a low light is floating in the backyard, and gilding from underneath the broccoli, leaf by leaf; how could the night have come to grief? gilding the tiny floating swallow's belly and lines of pink cloud in the sky, the day's preamble like wandering lines in marble, The cocks are now almost inaudible.
The sun climbs in, following "to see the end," faithful as enemy, or friend.
Written by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings | Create an image from this poem

i have found what you are like

i have found what you are like
the rain 

(Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep.
wields easily the pale club of the wind and swirled justly souls of flower strike the air in utterable coolness deeds of green thrilling light with thinne d newfragile blues lurch and.
press -in the woods which stutter and sing And the coolness of your smile is stirringofbirds between my arms;but i should rather than anything have(almost when hugeness will shut quietly)almost your kiss
Written by Langston Hughes | Create an image from this poem

Po Boy Blues

 When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
When I was home de Sunshine seemed like gold.
Since I come up North de Whole damn world's turned cold.
I was a good boy, Never done no wrong.
Yes, I was a good boy, Never done no wrong, But this world is weary An' de road is hard an' long.
I fell in love with A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money An' almost lose ma mind.
Weary, weary, Weary early in de morn.
Weary, weary, Early, early in de morn.
I's so weary I wish I'd never been born.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things