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Best Famous Bourbon Poems

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

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Written by David St John | Create an image from this poem

Los Angeles 1954

 It was in the old days,
When she used to hang out at a place
Called Club Zombie,
A black cabaret that the police liked
To raid now and then.
As she Stepped through the door, the light Would hit her platinum hair, And believe me, heads would turn.
Maestro Loved it; he'd have her by The arm as he led us through the packed crowd To a private corner Where her secluded oak table always waited.
She'd say, Jordan.
.
.
And I'd order her usual, A champagne cocktail with a tall shot of bourbon On the side.
She'd let her eyes Trail the length of the sleek neck Of the old stand-up bass, as The bass player knocked out the bottom line, His forehead glowing, glossy With sweat in the blue lights; Her own face, smooth and shining, as The liquor slowly blanketed the pills She'd slipped beneath her tongue.
Maestro'd kick the **** out of anybody Who tried to sneak up for an autograph; He'd say, Jordan, just let me know if Somebody gets too close.
.
.
.
Then he'd turn to her and whisper, Here's Where you get to be Miss Nobody.
.
.
And she'd smile as she let him Kiss her hand.
For a while, there was a singer At the club, a guy named Louis-- But Maestro'd change his name to "Michael Champion"; Well, when this guy leaned forward, Cradling the microphone in his huge hands, All the legs went weak Underneath the ladies.
He'd look over at her, letting his eyelids Droop real low, singing, Oh Baby I.
.
.
Oh Baby I Love.
.
.
I Love You.
.
.
And she'd be gone, those little mermaid tears Running down her cheeks.
Maestro Was always cool.
He'd let them use his room upstairs, Sometimes, because they couldn't go out-- Black and white couldn't mix like that then.
I mean, think about it-- This kid star and a cool beauty who made King Cole Sound raw? No, they had to keep it To the club; though sometimes, Near the end, he'd come out to her place At the beach, always taking the iced whisky I brought to him with a sly, sweet smile.
Once, sweeping his arm out in a slow Half-circle, the way at the club he'd Show the audience how far his endless love Had grown, he marked The circumference of the glare whitening the patio Where her friends all sat, sunglasses Masking their eyes.
.
.
And he said to me, Jordan, why do White people love the sun so?-- God's spotlight, my man? Leaning back, he looked over to where she Stood at one end of the patio, watching The breakers flatten along the beach below, Her body reflected and mirrored Perfectly in the bedroom's sliding black glass Door.
He stared at her Reflection for a while, then looked up at me And said, Jordan, I think that I must be Like a pool of water in a cave that sometimes She steps into.
.
.
Later, as I drove him back into the city, He hummed a Bessie Smith tune he'd sing For her, but he didn't say a word until We stopped at last back at the club.
He stepped slowly out of the back Of the Cadillac, and reaching to shake my hand Through the open driver's window, said, My man, Jordan.
.
.
Goodbye.


Written by Robert Browning | Create an image from this poem

De Gustibus---

 I.
Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees, (If our loves remain) In an English lane, By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice--- A boy and a girl, if the good fates please, Making love, say,--- The happier they! Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, And let them pass, as they will too soon, With the bean-flowers' boon, And the blackbird's tune, And May, and June! II.
What I love best in all the world Is a castle, precipice-encurled, In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine Or look for me, old fellow of mine, (If I get my head from out the mouth O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands, And come again to the land of lands)--- In a sea-side house to the farther South, Where the baked cicala dies of drouth, And one sharp tree---'tis a cypress---stands, By the many hundred years red-rusted, Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted, My sentinel to guard the sands To the water's edge.
For, what expands Before the house, but the great opaque Blue breadth of sea without a break? While, in the house, for ever crumbles Some fragment of the frescoed walls, From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons, And says there's news to-day---the king Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing, Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling: ---She hopes they have not caught the felons.
Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me--- (When fortune's malice Lost her---Calais)--- Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, ``Italy.
'' Such lovers old are I and she: So it always was, so shall ever be!
Written by Richard Brautigan | Create an image from this poem

Love Poem

 My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.
Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror, Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime Yet leaping before apopleptic streetcars— Misfit in any space.
And never on time.
A wrench in clocks and the solar system.
Only With words and people and love you move at ease; In traffic of wit expertly maneuver And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.
Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel, Your lipstick grinning on our coat, So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.
Be with me, darling, early and late.
Smash glasses— I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty All the toys of the world would break.
Written by Oliver Wendell Holmes | Create an image from this poem

The Flaâneur

 I love all sights of earth and skies, 
From flowers that glow to stars that shine; 
The comet and the penny show, 
All curious things, above, below, 
Hold each in turn my wandering eyes: 
I claim the Christian Pagan's line, 
Humani nihil, -- even so, -- 
And is not human life divine? 
When soft the western breezes blow, 
And strolling youths meet sauntering maids, 
I love to watch the stirring trades 
Beneath the Vallombrosa shades 
Our much-enduring elms bestow; 
The vender and his rhetoric's flow, 
That lambent stream of liquid lies; 
The bait he dangles from his line, 
The gudgeon and his gold-washed prize.
I halt before the blazoned sign That bids me linger to admire The drama time can never tire, The little hero of the hunch, With iron arm and soul of fire, And will that works his fierce desire, -- Untamed, unscared, unconquered Punch! My ear a pleasing torture finds In tones the withered sibyl grinds, -- The dame sans merci's broken strain, Whom I erewhile, perchance, have known, When Orleans filled the Bourbon throne, A siren singing by the Seine.
But most I love the tube that spies The orbs celestial in their march; That shows the comet as it whisks Its tail across the planets' disks, As if to blind their blood-shot eyes; Or wheels so close against the sun We tremble at the thought of risks Our little spinning ball may run, To pop like corn that children parch, From summer something overdone, And roll, a cinder, through the skies.
Grudge not to-day the scanty fee To him who farms the firmament, To whom the Milky Way is free; Who holds the wondrous crystal key, The silent Open Sesame That Science to her sons has lent; Who takes his toll, and lifts the bar That shuts the road to sun and star.
If Venus only comes to time, (And prophets say she must and shall,) To-day will hear the tinkling chime Of many a ringing silver dime, For him whose optic glass supplies The crowd with astronomic eyes, -- The Galileo of the Mall.
Dimly the transit morning broke; The sun seemed doubting what to do, As one who questions how to dress, And takes his doublets from the press, And halts between the old and new.
Please Heaven he wear his suit of blue, Or don, at least, his ragged cloak, With rents that show the azure through! I go the patient crowd to join That round the tube my eyes discern, The last new-comer of the file, And wait, and wait, a weary while, And gape, and stretch, and shrug, and smile, (For each his place must fairly earn, Hindmost and foremost, in his turn,) Till hitching onward, pace by pace, I gain at last the envied place, And pay the white exiguous coin: The sun and I are face to face; He glares at me, I stare at him; And lo! my straining eye has found A little spot that, black and round, Lies near the crimsoned fire-orb's rim.
O blessed, beauteous evening star, Well named for her whom earth adores, -- The Lady of the dove-drawn car, -- I know thee in thy white simar; But veiled in black, a rayless spot, Blank as a careless scribbler's blot, Stripped of thy robe of silvery flame, -- The stolen robe that Night restores When Day has shut his golden doors, -- I see thee, yet I know thee not; And canst thou call thyself the same? A black, round spot, -- and that is all; And such a speck our earth would be If he who looks upon the stars Through the red atmosphere of Mars Could see our little creeping ball Across the disk of crimson crawl As I our sister planet see.
And art thou, then, a world like ours, Flung from the orb that whirled our own A molten pebble from its zone? How must thy burning sands absorb The fire-waves of the blazing orb, Thy chain so short, thy path so near, Thy flame-defying creatures hear The maelstroms of the photosphere! And is thy bosom decked with flowers That steal their bloom from scalding showers? And hast thou cities, domes, and towers, And life, and love that makes it dear, And death that fills thy tribes with fear? Lost in my dream, my spirit soars Through paths the wandering angels know; My all-pervading thought explores The azure ocean's lucent shores; I leave my mortal self below, As up the star-lit stairs I climb, And still the widening view reveals In endless rounds the circling wheels That build the horologe of time.
New spheres, new suns, new systems gleam; The voice no earth-born echo hears Steals softly on my ravished ears: I hear them "singing as they shine" -- A mortal's voice dissolves my dream: My patient neighbor, next in line, Hints gently there are those who wait.
O guardian of the starry gate, What coin shall pay this debt of mine? Too slight thy claim, too small the fee That bids thee turn the potent key The Tuscan's hand has placed in thine.
Forgive my own the small affront, The insult of the proffered dime; Take it, O friend, since this thy wont, But still shall faithful memory be A bankrupt debtor unto thee, And pay thee with a grateful rhyme.
Written by Elizabeth Bishop | Create an image from this poem

Arrival At Santos

 Here is a coast; here is a harbor; 
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery: 
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains, 
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,

with a little church on top of one.
And warehouses, some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue, and some tall, uncertain palms.
Oh, tourist, is this how this country is going to answer you and your immodest demands for a different world, and a better life, and complete comprehension of both at last, and immediately, after eighteen days of suspension? Finish your breakfast.
The tender is coming, a strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brilliant rag.
So that's the flag.
I never saw it before.
I somehow never thought of there being a flag, but of course there was, all along.
And coins, I presume, and paper money; they remain to be seen.
And gingerly now we climb down the ladder backward, myself and a fellow passenger named Miss Breen, descending into the midst of twenty-six freighters waiting to be loaded with green coffee beaus.
Please, boy, do be more careful with that boat hook! Watch out! Oh! It has caught Miss Breen's skirt! There! Miss Breen is about seventy, a retired police lieutenant, six feet tall, with beautiful bright blue eyes and a kind expression.
Her home, when she is at home, is in Glens Fall s, New York.
There.
We are settled.
The customs officials will speak English, we hope, and leave us our bourbon and cigarettes.
Ports are necessities, like postage stamps, or soap, but they seldom seem to care what impression they make, or, like this, only attempt, since it does not matter, the unassertive colors of soap, or postage stamps-- wasting away like the former, slipping the way the latter do when we mail the letters we wrote on the boat, either because the glue here is very inferior or because of the heat.
We leave Santos at once; we are driving to the interior.


Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Break

 It was also my violent heart that broke,
falling down the front hall stairs.
It was also a message I never spoke, calling, riser after riser, who cares about you, who cares, splintering up the hip that was merely made of crystal, the post of it and also the cup.
I exploded in the hallway like a pistol.
So I fell apart.
So I came all undone.
Yes.
I was like a box of dog bones.
But now they've wrapped me in like a nun.
Burst like firecrackers! Held like stones! What a feat sailing queerly like Icarus until the tempest undid me and I broke.
The ambulance drivers made such a fuss.
But when I cried, "Wait for my courage!" they smoked and then they placed me, tied me up on their plate, and wheeled me out to their coffin, my nest.
Slowly the siren slowly the hearse, sedate as a dowager.
At the E.
W.
they cut off my dress.
I cried, "Oh Jesus, help me! Oh Jesus Christ!" and the nurse replied, "Wrong name.
My name is Barbara," and hung me in an odd device, a buck's extension and a Balkan overhead frame.
The orthopedic man declared, "You'll be down for a year.
" His scoop.
His news.
He opened the skin.
He scraped.
He pared and drilled through bone for his four-inch screws.
That takes brute strength like pushing a cow up hill.
I tell you, it takes skill and bedside charm and all that know how.
The body is a damn hard thing to kill.
But please don't touch or jiggle my bed.
I'm Ethan Frome's wife.
I'll move when I'm able.
The T.
V.
hangs from the wall like a moose head.
I hide a pint of bourbon in my bedside table.
A bird full of bones, now I'm held by a sand bag.
The fracture was twice.
The fracture was double.
The days are horizontal.
The days are a drag.
All of the skeleton in me is in trouble.
Across the hall is the bedpan station.
The urine and stools pass hourly by my head in silver bowls.
They flush in unison in the autoclave.
My one dozen roses are dead.
The have ceased to menstruate.
They hang there like little dried up blood clots.
And the heart too, that cripple, how it sang once.
How it thought it could call the shots! Understand what happened the day I fell.
My heart had stammered and hungered at a marriage feast until the angel of hell turned me into the punisher, the acrobat.
My bones are loose as clothespins, as abandoned as dolls in a toy shop and my heart, old hunger motor, with its sins revved up like an engine that would not stop.
And now I spend all day taking care of my body, that baby.
Its cargo is scarred.
I anoint the bedpan.
I brush my hair, waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard, for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart and were screwed together.
They will knit.
And the other corpse, the fractured heart, I feed it piecemeal, little chalice.
I'm good to it.
Yet lie a fire alarm it waits to be known.
It is wired.
In it many colors are stored.
While my body's in prison, heart cells alone have multiplied.
My bones are merely bored with all this waiting around.
But the heart, this child of myself that resides in the flesh, this ultimate signature of the me, the start of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.
The figures are placed at the grave of my bones.
All figures knowing it is the other death they came for.
Each figure standing alone.
The heart burst with love and lost its breath.
This little town, this little country is real and thus it is so of the post and the cup and thus of the violent heart.
The zeal of my house doth eat me up.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

A Snifter

 After working hard all day
 In the office,
How much worse on homeward way
 My old cough is!
Barney's Bar is gaily lit,
 Let me stop there;
Just to buck me up a bit
 Have a drop there.
As I stand beside the screen Hesitating, I have thought of how Noreen Will be waiting; Baby Patsy in her lap Gay and laughing, While at Barney's foaming tap I am quaffing.
Barney's Bar is mighty bright, Looks so cheery.
Wonder what I'll drink tonight? Gee! I'm weary.
Will I have Scotch or Rye? Bourbon maybe .
.
.
Then I see with mental eye Wife and baby.
So I say 'tis malted milk I'll be skoffin'; Sooth my throttle sleek as silk, Ease my coughin' .
.
.
Say, I love them two to death, Sure they miss me: With no whisky on my breath How they'll kiss me!
Written by Robert Burns | Create an image from this poem

197. Song—The Banks of the Devon

 HOW pleasant the banks of the clear winding Devon,
 With green spreading bushes and flow’rs blooming fair!
But the boniest flow’r on the banks of the Devon
 Was once a sweet bud on the braes of the Ayr.
Mild be the sun on this sweet blushing flower, In the gay rosy morn, as it bathes in the dew; And gentle the fall of the soft vernal shower, That steals on the evening each leaf to renew! O spare the dear blossom, ye orient breezes, With chill hoary wing as ye usher the dawn; And far be thou distant, thou reptile that seizes The verdure and pride of the garden or lawn! Let Bourbon exult in his gay gilded lilies, And England triumphant display her proud rose: A fairer than either adorns the green valleys, Where Devon, sweet Devon, meandering flows.
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

A LETTER

Dear Miss Lucy: I been t'inkin' dat I 'd write you long fo' dis,
But dis writin' 's mighty tejous, an' you know jes' how it is.
But I 's got a little lesure, so I teks my pen in han'
Fu' to let you know my feelin's since I retched dis furrin' lan'.
I 's right well, I 's glad to tell you (dough dis climate ain't to blame),
An' I hopes w'en dese lines reach you, dat dey 'll fin' yo' se'f de same.
Cose I 'se feelin kin' o' homesick—dat 's ez nachul ez kin be,[Pg 152]
Wen a feller 's mo'n th'ee thousand miles across dat awful sea.
(Don't you let nobidy fool you 'bout de ocean bein' gran';
If you want to see de billers, you jes' view dem f'om de lan'.)
'Bout de people? We been t'inkin' dat all white folks was alak;
But dese Englishmen is diffunt, an' dey 's curus fu' a fac'.
Fust, dey's heavier an' redder in dey make-up an' dey looks,
An' dey don't put salt nor pepper in a blessed t'ing dey cooks!
Wen dey gin you good ol' tu'nips, ca'ots, pa'snips, beets, an' sich,
Ef dey ain't some one to tell you, you cain't 'stinguish which is which.
Wen I t'ought I 's eatin' chicken—you may b'lieve dis hyeah 's a lie—
But de waiter beat me down dat I was eatin' rabbit pie.
An' dey 'd t'ink dat you was crazy—jes' a reg'lar ravin' loon,
Ef you 'd speak erbout a 'possum or a piece o' good ol' coon.
O, hit's mighty nice, dis trav'lin', an' I 's kin' o' glad I come.
But, I reckon, now I 's willin' fu' to tek my way back home.
I done see de Crystal Palace, an' I 's hyeahd dey string-band play,
But I has n't seen no banjos layin' nowhahs roun' dis way.
Jes' gin ol' Jim Bowles a banjo, an' he 'd not go very fu',
'Fo' he 'd outplayed all dese fiddlers, wif dey flourish and dey stir.
Evahbiddy dat I 's met wif has been monst'ous kin an' good;
But I t'ink I 'd lak it better to be down in Jones's wood,
Where we ust to have sich frolics, Lucy, you an' me an' Nelse,
Dough my appetite 'ud call me, ef dey was n't nuffin else.
I 'd jes' lak to have some sweet-pertaters roasted in de skin;
I 's a-longin' fu' my chittlin's an' my mustard greens ergin;
I 's a-wishin' fu' some buttermilk, an' co'n braid, good an' brown,
An' a drap o' good ol' bourbon fu' to wash my feelin's down!
An' I 's comin' back to see you jes' as ehly as I kin,
So you better not go spa'kin' wif dat wuffless scoun'el Quin!
Well, I reckon, I mus' close now; write ez soon's dis reaches you;
Gi' my love to Sister Mandy an' to Uncle Isham, too.
Tell de folks I sen' 'em howdy; gin a kiss to pap an' mam;
Closin' I is, deah Miss Lucy, Still Yo' Own True-Lovin' Sam.[Pg 153]
P. S. Ef you cain't mek out dis letter, lay it by erpon de she'f,
An' when I git home, I 'll read it, darlin', to you my own se'f.
Written by John Berryman | Create an image from this poem

Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage

 How this woman came by the courage, how she got
the courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot
night of the eight of July,
where it came from, did once the Lord frown down
upon her ancient cradle thinking 'This one
will do before she die

for two and seventy years of chipped indignities
at least,' and with his thunder clapped a promise?
In that far away town
who looky upon my mother with shame & rage
that any should endure such pilgrimage,
growled Henry sweating, grown

but not grown used to the goodness of this woman
in her great strength, in her hope superhuman,
no, no, not used at all.
I declare a mystery, he mumbled to himself, of love, and took the bourbon from the shelf and drank her a tall one, tall.

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