10 Best Famous Boneyard Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Boneyard poems. This is a select list of the best famous Boneyard poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Boneyard poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of boneyard poems.

• All Famous Boneyard Poems

 A dying firelight slides along the quirt
Of the cast iron cowboy where he leans
Against my father's books. The lariat
Whirls into darkness. My girl in skin tight jeans
Fingers a page of Captain Marriat
Inviting insolent shadows to her shirt.

We rise together to the second floor.
Outside, across the lake, an endless wind
Whips against the headstones of the dead and wails
In the trees for all who have and have not sinned.
She rubs against me and I feel her nails.
Although we are alone, I lock the door.

The eventual shapes of all our formless prayers:
This dark, this cabin of loose imaginings,
Wind, lip, lake, everything awaits
The slow unloosening of her underthings
And then the noise. Something is dropped. It grates
against the attic beams. I climb the stairs
Armed with a belt.

A long magnesium shaft
Of moonlight from the dormer cuts a path
Among the shattered skeletons of mice.
A great black presence beats its wings in wrath.
Above the boneyard burn its golden eyes.
Some small grey fur is pulsing in its grip.

 We bore him to his boneyard lot
One afternoon at three;
The clergyman was on the spot
To earn his modest fee.
We sprinkled on his coffin ld
The customary loam,
And so old Bill was snugly slid
 To his last home.

A lonesome celebate we thought,
For close as clam was he;
We never guessed that he had got
A lawful family,
Till lo! we saw a gorgeous wreath
Reposing on his bier,
With on a scarlet scroll beneath:
 "To Father Dear."

He ordered it hisself, they said,
Before he had to go.
His folks don't know that he is dead -
Maybe they'll never know.
His step was frail, his hair was grey,
But though his sight was dim,
He liked to kid hisself that they
 Still thought of him.

Maybe they did: we never knew,
And he would never tell;
Perhaps their hearts were broken too -
His was, I think . . . Ah well,
We left him in the boneyard lot
With none to shed a tear,
And just a wreath, the one he bought:

 "To Father Dear."

 (March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar goes in rags.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.
And the stonecutters earn a living—with lies—on the tombs of liars.

Aliar looks ’em in the eye
And lies to a woman,
Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool.
And he is an old liar; we know him many years back.

 A liar lies to nations.
 A liar lies to the people.
A liar takes the blood of the people
And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie,
 A laugh in his neck,
 A lie in his mouth.
And this liar is an old one; we know him many years.
 He is straight as a dog’s hind leg.
 He is straight as a corkscrew.
He is white as a black cat’s foot at midnight.

The tongue of a man is tied on this,
On the liar who lies to nations,
The liar who lies to the people.
The tongue of a man is tied on this
And ends: To hell with ’em all.
 To hell with ’em all.

It’s a song hard as a riveter’s hammer,
 Hard as the sleep of a crummy hobo,
 Hard as the sleep of a lousy doughboy,
Twisted as a shell-shock idiot’s gibber.

The liars met where the doors were locked.
They said to each other: Now for war.
The liars fixed it and told ’em: Go.

Across their tables they fixed it up,
Behind their doors away from the mob.
And the guns did a job that nicked off millions.
The guns blew seven million off the map,
The guns sent seven million west.
Seven million shoving up the daisies.
Across their tables they fixed it up,
 The liars who lie to nations.

 And now
 Out of the butcher’s job
 And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned,
 Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts,
Out of this they are calling now: Let’s go back where we were.
 Let us run the world again, us, us.

Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and we’ll cash in again.

So I hear The People talk.
I hear them tell each other:
 Let the strong men be ready.
 Let the strong men watch.
 Let your wrists be cool and your head clear.
 Let the liars get their finish,
 The liars and their waiting game, waiting a day again
 To open the doors and tell us: War! get out to your war again.

So I hear The People tell each other:
 Look at to-day and to-morrow.
 Fix this clock that nicks off millions
 When The Liars say it’s time.
 Take things in your own hands.
 To hell with ’em all,
 The liars who lie to nations,
 The liars who lie to The People.

 One spoke: "Come, let us gaily go
With laughter, love and lust,
Since in a century or so
We'll all be boneyard dust.
When unborn shadows hold the screen,
(Our betters, I'll allow)
'Twill be as if we'd never been,
A hundred years from now. 

When we have played life's lively game
Right royally we'll rot,
And not a soul will care a damn
The why or how we fought;
To grub for gold or grab for fame
Or raise a holy row,
It will be all the bloody same
A hundred years from now." 

Said I: "Look! I have built a tower
Upon you lonely hill,
Designed to be a daughter's dower,
Yet when my heart is still,
The stone I set with horny hand
And salty sweat of brow,
A record of my strength will sand
A hundred years from now. 

"There's nothing lost and nothing vain
In all this world so wide;
The ocean hoards each drop of rain
To swell its sweeping tide;
The desert seeks each grain of sand
It's empire to endow,
And we a bright brave world have planned
A hundred years from now. 

And all we are and all we do
Will bring that world to be;
Our strain and pain let us not rue,
Though other eyes shall see;
For other hearts will bravely beat
And lips will sing of how
We strove to make life sane and sweet
A hundred years from now.

 I'm gatherin' flowers by the wayside to lay on the grave of Bill;
 I've sneaked away from the billet, 'cause Jim wouldn't understand;
'E'd call me a silly fat'ead, and larf till it made 'im ill,
 To see me 'ere in the cornfield, wiv a big bookay in me 'and.

For Jim and me we are rough uns, but Bill was one o' the best;
 We 'listed and learned together to larf at the wust wot comes;
Then Bill copped a packet proper, and took 'is departure West,
 So sudden 'e 'adn't a minit to say good-bye to 'is chums.

And they took me to where 'e was planted, a sort of a measly mound,
 And, thinks I, 'ow Bill would be tickled, bein' so soft and *****,
If I gathered a bunch o' them wild-flowers, and sort of arranged them round
 Like a kind of a bloody headpiece . . . and that's the reason I'm 'ere.

But not for the love of glory I wouldn't 'ave Jim to know.
 'E'd call me a slobberin' Cissy, and larf till 'is sides was sore;
I'd 'ave larfed at meself too, it isn't so long ago;
 But some'ow it changes a feller, 'avin' a taste o' war.

It 'elps a man to be 'elpful, to know wot 'is pals is worth
 (Them golden poppies is blazin' like lamps some fairy 'as lit);
I'm fond o' them big white dysies. . . . Now Jim's o' the salt o' the earth;
 But 'e 'as got a tongue wot's a terror, and 'e ain't sentimental a bit.

I likes them blue chaps wot's 'idin' so shylike among the corn.
 Won't Bill be glad! We was allus thicker 'n thieves, us three.
Why! 'Oo's that singin' so 'earty? JIM! And as sure as I'm born
 'E's there in the giddy cornfields, a-gatherin' flowers like me.

Quick! Drop me posy be'ind me. I watches 'im for a while,
 Then I says: "Wot 'o, there, Chummy! Wot price the little bookay?"
And 'e starts like a bloke wot's guilty, and 'e says with a sheepish smile:
 "She's a bit of orl right, the widder wot keeps the estaminay."

So 'e goes away in a 'urry, and I wishes 'im best o' luck,
 And I picks up me bunch o' wild-flowers, and the light's gettin' sorto dim,
When I makes me way to the boneyard, and . . . I stares like a man wot's stuck,
 For wot do I see? Bill's grave-mound strewn with the flowers of Jim.

Of course I won't never tell 'im, bein' a tactical lad;
 And Jim parley-voos to the widder: "Trez beans, lamoor; compree?"
Oh, 'e'd die of shame if 'e knew I knew; but say! won't Bill be glad
 When 'e stares through the bleedin' clods and sees the blossoms of Jim and me?

 Deeming that I was due to die
I framed myself a coffin;
So full of graveyard zeal was I,
I set the folks a-laughing.
I made it snugly to my fit,
My joinering was honest;
And sometimes in it I would sit,
And fancy I was non est. 

I stored it on my cabin shelf
Forever to remind me,
When I was tickled with myself,
That Death was close behind me.
Let's be prepared, I used to say,
E're in the Dark we launch us:
And so with boding day by day
I kept me coffin-conscious. 

Then came that winter dark as doom,
No firing wood had I;
My shack was icy as a tomb
And I was set to die.
But e'er the losing of my wits
I saw that coffin there,
S smashing the damned thing to bits
I made a gorgeous flare. 

I never saw a flame so bright,
So goldenly divine,
As starred the blackness of the night
That boneyard box of mine.
And now I go forth coffin-shy,
With no more carnal fears,
For radiantly sure am I
I'll stack a hundred years.