Best Famous Chatted Poems

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

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• All Famous Chatted Poems

Written by Barry Tebb | INCOMPATABILITIES For Brenda Williams La lune diminue; divin septembre. Divine September the moon wanes. Pierre Jean Jouve Themes for poems and the detritus of dreams coalesce: This is one September I shall not forget. The grammar-school caretaker always had the boards re-blacked And the floors waxed, but I never shone. The stripes of the red and black blazer Were prison-grey. You could never see things that way: Your home had broken windows to the street. You had the mortification of lice in your hair While I had the choice of Brylcreem or orange pomade. Four children, an alcoholic father and An Irish immigrant mother. Failure’s metaphor. I did not make it like Alan Bennett, Who still sends funny postcards About our Leeds childhood. Of your’s, you could never speak And found my nostalgia Wholly inappropriate. Forgetting your glasses for the eleven plus, No money for the uniform for the pass at thirteen. It wasn’t - as I imagined - shame that kept you from telling But fear of the consequences for your mother Had you sobbed the night’s terrors Of your father’s drunken homecomings, Your mother sat with the door open In all weathers while you, the oldest, Waited with her, perhaps Something might have been done. He never missed a day’s work digging graves, Boasting he could do a six-footer Single-handed in two hours flat. That hackneyed phrase ‘He drank all his wages’ Doesn’t convey his nightly rages The flow of obscenities about menstruation While the three younger ones were in bed And you waited with your mother To walk the streets of Seacroft. “Your father murdered your mother” As Auntie Margaret said, Should a witness Need indicting. Your mother’s growing cancer went diagnosed, but unremarked Until the final days She was too busy auxiliary nursing Or working in the Lakeside Caf?. It was her wages that put bread and jam And baked beans into your stomachs. Her final hospitalisation Was the arena for your father’s last rage Her fare interfering with the night’s drinking; He fought in the Burma Campaign but won no medals. Some kind of psychiatric discharge- ‘paranoia’ Lurked in his papers. The madness went undiagnosed Until his sixtieth birthday. You never let me meet him Even after our divorce. In the end you took me on a visit with the children. A neat flat with photographs of grandchildren, Stacks of wood for the stove, washing hung precisely In the kitchen, a Sunday suit in the wardrobe. An unwrinkling of smiles, the hard handshake Of work-roughened hands. One night he smashed up the tidy flat. The TV screen was powder The clock ticked on the neat lawn ‘Murder in Seacroft Hospital’ Emblazoned on the kitchen wall. I went with you and your sister in her car to Roundhay Wing. Your sister had to leave for work or sleep You had to back to meet the children from school. For Ward 42 it wasn’t an especially difficult admission. My first lesson: I shut one set of firedoors while the charge nurse Bolted the other but after five minutes his revolt Was over and he signed the paper. The nurse on nights had a sociology degree And an interest in borderline schizophrenia. After lightsout we chatted about Kohut and Kernberg And Melanie Klein. Your father was occasionally truculent, Barricading himself in on one home leave. Nothing out of the way For a case of that kind. The old ladies on the estate sighed, Single men were very scarce. Always a gentleman, tipping His cap to the ladies. There seems to be objections in the family to poetry Or at least to the kind that actually speaks And fails to lie down quietly on command. Yours seems to have set mine alight- I must get something right.

Written by Jim Carroll | 8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain 1/ Genius is not a generous thing In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover And it resents fame With bitter vengeance Pills and powdres only placate it awhile Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse Where the currents of electricity shift Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth, Cheese whiz and guns Whose triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust In timeless illusion 2/ The guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem. The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right thru Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverbrating In your mind And from the stage All the faces out front seemed so hungry With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding From where they sat, you seemed so far up there High and live and diving And instead you were swamp crawling Down, deeper Until you tasted the Earth's own blood And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds 3/ You should have talked more with the monkey He's always willing to negotiate I'm still paying him off. . . The greater the money and fame The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings Your will could have sped it up. . . But you left that in a plane Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration 4/ Here's synchronicity for you: Your music's tape was inside my walkman When my best friend from summer camp Called with the news about you I listened them. . . It was all there! Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound Less and less light Until you hit solid rock The drill bit broke and the valley became A thin crevice, impassible in time, As time itself stopped. And the walls became cages of brilliant notes Pressing in. . . Pressure That's how diamonds are made And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses Down in on you 5/ Then I translated your muttered lyrics And the phrases were curious: Like "incognito libido" And "Chalk Skin Bending" The words kept getting smaller and smaller Until Separated from their music Each letter spilled out into a cartridge Which fit only in the barrel of a gun 6/ And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible Because that's where the pain came from That's where the demons were digging The world outside was blank Its every cause was just a continuation Of another unsolved effect 7/ But Kurt. . . Didn't the thought that you would never write another song Another feverish line or riff Make you think twice? That's what I don't understand Because it's kept me alive, above any wounds 8/ If only you hadn't swallowed yourself into a coma in Roma. . . You could have gone to Florence And looked into the eyes of Bellinni or Rafael's Portraits Perhaps inside them You could have found a threshold back to beauty's arms Where it all began. . . No matter that you felt betrayed by her That is always the cost As Frank said, Of a young artist's remorseless passion Which starts out as a kiss And follows like a curse

Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Hiawathas Fishing Forth upon the Gitche Gumee, On the shining Big-Sea-Water, With his fishing-line of cedar, Of the twisted bark of cedar, Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma, Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes, In his birch canoe exulting All alone went Hiawatha. Through the clear, transparent water He could see the fishes swimming Far down in the depths below him; See the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, See the Shawgashee, the craw-fish, Like a spider on the bottom, On the white and sandy bottom. At the stern sat Hiawatha, With his fishing-line of cedar; In his plumes the breeze of morning Played as in the hemlock branches; On the bows, with tail erected, Sat the squirrel, Adjidaumo; In his fur the breeze of morning Played as in the prairie grasses. On the white sand of the bottom Lay the monster Mishe-Nahma, Lay the sturgeon, King of Fishes; Through his gills he breathed the water, With his fins he fanned and winnowed, With his tail he swept the sand-floor. There he lay in all his armor; On each side a shield to guard him, Plates of bone upon his forehead, Down his sides and back and shoulders Plates of bone with spines projecting Painted was he with his war-paints, Stripes of yellow, red, and azure, Spots of brown and spots of sable; And he lay there on the bottom, Fanning with his fins of purple, As above him Hiawatha In his birch canoe came sailing, With his fishing-line of cedar. "Take my bait," cried Hiawatha, Dawn into the depths beneath him, "Take my bait, O Sturgeon, Nahma! Come up from below the water, Let us see which is the stronger!" And he dropped his line of cedar Through the clear, transparent water, Waited vainly for an answer, Long sat waiting for an answer, And repeating loud and louder, "Take my bait, O King of Fishes!" Quiet lay the sturgeon, Nahma, Fanning slowly in the water, Looking up at Hiawatha, Listening to his call and clamor, His unnecessary tumult, Till he wearied of the shouting; And he said to the Kenozha, To the pike, the Maskenozha, "Take the bait of this rude fellow, Break the line of Hiawatha!" In his fingers Hiawatha Felt the loose line jerk and tighten, As he drew it in, it tugged so That the birch canoe stood endwise, Like a birch log in the water, With the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Perched and frisking on the summit. Full of scorn was Hiawatha When he saw the fish rise upward, Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, Coming nearer, nearer to him, And he shouted through the water, "Esa! esa! shame upon you! You are but the pike, Kenozha, You are not the fish I wanted, You are not the King of Fishes!" Reeling downward to the bottom Sank the pike in great confusion, And the mighty sturgeon, Nahma, Said to Ugudwash, the sun-fish, To the bream, with scales of crimson, "Take the bait of this great boaster, Break the line of Hiawatha!" Slowly upward, wavering, gleaming, Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, Seized the line of Hiawatha, Swung with all his weight upon it, Made a whirlpool in the water, Whirled the birch canoe in circles, Round and round in gurgling eddies, Till the circles in the water Reached the far-off sandy beaches, Till the water-flags and rushes Nodded on the distant margins. But when Hiawatha saw him Slowly rising through the water, Lifting up his disk refulgent, Loud he shouted in derision, "Esa! esa! shame upon you! You are Ugudwash, the sun-fish, You are not the fish I wanted, You are not the King of Fishes!" Slowly downward, wavering, gleaming, Sank the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, And again the sturgeon, Nahma, Heard the shout of Hiawatha, Heard his challenge of defiance, The unnecessary tumult, Ringing far across the water. From the white sand of the bottom Up he rose with angry gesture, Quivering in each nerve and fibre, Clashing all his plates of armor, Gleaming bright with all his war-paint; In his wrath he darted upward, Flashing leaped into the sunshine, Opened his great jaws, and swallowed Both canoe and Hiawatha. Down into that darksome cavern Plunged the headlong Hiawatha, As a log on some black river Shoots and plunges down the rapids, Found himself in utter darkness, Groped about in helpless wonder, Till he felt a great heart beating, Throbbing in that utter darkness. And he smote it in his anger, With his fist, the heart of Nahma, Felt the mighty King of Fishes Shudder through each nerve and fibre, Heard the water gurgle round him As he leaped and staggered through it, Sick at heart, and faint and weary. Crosswise then did Hiawatha Drag his birch-canoe for safety, Lest from out the jaws of Nahma, In the turmoil and confusion, Forth he might be hurled and perish. And the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Frisked and chatted very gayly, Toiled and tugged with Hiawatha Till the labor was completed. Then said Hiawatha to him, "O my little friend, the squirrel, Bravely have you toiled to help me; Take the thanks of Hiawatha, And the name which now he gives you; For hereafter and forever Boys shall call you Adjidaumo, Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!" And again the sturgeon, Nahma, Gasped and quivered in the water, Then was still, and drifted landward Till he grated on the pebbles, Till the listening Hiawatha Heard him grate upon the margin, Felt him strand upon the pebbles, Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes, Lay there dead upon the margin. Then he heard a clang and flapping, As of many wings assembling, Heard a screaming and confusion, As of birds of prey contending, Saw a gleam of light above him, Shining through the ribs of Nahma, Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls, Of Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, peering, Gazing at him through the opening, Heard them saying to each other, "'T is our brother, Hiawatha!" And he shouted from below them, Cried exulting from the caverns: "O ye sea-gulls! O my brothers! I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma; Make the rifts a little larger, With your claws the openings widen, Set me free from this dark prison, And henceforward and forever Men shall speak of your achievements, Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, Yes, Kayoshk, the Noble Scratchers!" And the wild and clamorous sea-gulls Toiled with beak and claws together, Made the rifts and openings wider In the mighty ribs of Nahma, And from peril and from prison, From the body of the sturgeon, From the peril of the water, They released my Hiawatha. He was standing near his wigwam, On the margin of the water, And he called to old Nokomis, Called and beckoned to Nokomis, Pointed to the sturgeon, Nahma, Lying lifeless on the pebbles, With the sea-gulls feeding on him. "I have slain the Mishe-Nahma, Slain the King of Fishes!" said he' "Look! the sea-gulls feed upon him, Yes, my friends Kayoshk, the sea-gulls; Drive them not away, Nokomis, They have saved me from great peril In the body of the sturgeon, Wait until their meal is ended, Till their craws are full with feasting, Till they homeward fly, at sunset, To their nests among the marshes; Then bring all your pots and kettles, And make oil for us in Winter. " And she waited till the sun set, Till the pallid moon, the Night-sun, Rose above the tranquil water, Till Kayoshk, the sated sea-gulls, From their banquet rose with clamor, And across the fiery sunset Winged their way to far-off islands, To their nests among the rushes. To his sleep went Hiawatha, And Nokomis to her labor, Toiling patient in the moonlight, Till the sun and moon changed places, Till the sky was red with sunrise, And Kayoshk, the hungry sea-gulls, Came back from the reedy islands, Clamorous for their morning banquet. Three whole days and nights alternate Old Nokomis and the sea-gulls Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma, Till the waves washed through the rib-bones, Till the sea-gulls came no longer, And upon the sands lay nothing But the skeleton of Nahma.

Written by Barry Tebb | YOU “Remember, you loved me, when we were young, one day” The words of the song in Tauber’s mellifluous tenor Haunt my nights and days, make me tremble when I hear Your voice on the phone, sadden me when I can’t make into your smile The pucker of your lips, the gleam in your eye. The day we met is with me still, you asked directions And on the way we chatted. You told me how you’d left Lancashire for Leeds, went to the same TC as me, even liked poetry Both were looking for an ‘interesting evening class’ Instead we found each other. You took me back for tea to the flat in Headingley You shared with two other girls. The class in Moortown Was a disaster. Walking home in the rain I put my arm Around you and you did not resist, we shared your umbrella Then we kissed. I liked the taste of your lips, the tingle of your fingertips, Your mild perfume. When a sudden gust blew your umbrella inside out We sheltered underneath a cobbled arch, a rainy arch, a rainbow arch. “I’m sorry”, you said about nothing in particular, perhaps the class Gone wrong, the weather, I’ll never know but there were tears in your eyes But perhaps it was just the rain. We kissed again and I felt Your soft breasts and smelt the hair on your neck and I was lost to you And you to me perhaps, I’ll never know. We went to plays, I read my poems aloud in quiet places, I met your mother and you met mine. We quarrelled over stupid things. When my best friend seduced you I blamed him and envied him And tried to console you when you cried a whole day through. The next weekend I had the flu and insisted you came to look after me In my newly-rented bungalow. Out of the blue I said, “What you did for him You can do for me”. It was not the way our first and only love-making Should have been, you guilty and regretful, me resentful and not tender. When I woke I saw you in the half-light naked, curled and innocent I truly loved you If I’d proposed you might have agreed, I’ll never know. A month later you were pregnant and I was not the father. I wanted to help you with the baby, wanted you to stay with me So I could look after you and be there for the birth but your mind Was set elsewhere end I was too immature to understand or care. When I saw you again you had Sarah and I had Brenda, my wife-to-be; Three decades of nightmare ahead with neither of our ‘adult children’ Quite right, both drink to excess and have been on wards. Nor has your life been a total success, full-time teaching till you retired Then Victim Support: where’s that sharp mind, that laughter and that passion? And what have I to show? A few pamphlets, a small ‘Selected’, a single good review. Sat in South Kensington on the way to the Institut I wrote this, Too frightened even to phone you.

Written by Heather McHugh | What He Thought We were supposed to do a job in Italy and, full of our feeling for ourselves (our sense of being Poets from America) we went from Rome to Fano, met the Mayor, mulled a couple matters over. The Italian literati seemed bewildered by the language of America: they asked us what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious "cheap date" (no explanation lessened this one's mystery). Among Italian writers we could recognize our counterparts: the academic, the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous, the brazen and the glib. And there was one administrator (The Conservative), in suit of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide with measured pace and uninflected tone narrated sights and histories the hired van hauled us past. Of all he was most politic-- and least poetic-- so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome I found a book of poems this unprepossessing one had written: it was there in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended) where it must have been abandoned by the German visitor (was there a bus of them?) to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn't read Italian either, so I put the book back in the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till, sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, make our mark, one of us asked "What's poetry? Is it the fruits and vegetables and marketplace at Campo dei Fiori or the statue there?" Because I was the glib one, I identified the answer instantly, I didn't have to think-- "The truth is both, it's both!" I blurted out. But that was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed taught me something about difficulty, for our underestimated host spoke out all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said: The statue represents Giordano Bruno, brought to be burned in the public square because of his offence against authority, which was to say the Church. His crime was his belief the universe does not revolve around the human being: God is no fixed point or central government but rather is poured in waves, through all things: all things move. "If God is not the soul itself, he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world. " Such was his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die they feared he might incite the crowd (the man was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors placed upon his face an iron mask in which he could not speak. That is how they burned him. That is how he died, without a word, in front of everyone. And poetry-- (we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to the man in gray; he went on softly)-- poetry is what he thought, but did not say.

Written by Anna Akhmatova | In Memory of M. B Here is my gift, not roses on your grave, not sticks of burning incense. You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain. You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes, and suffocated inside stifling walls. Alone you let the terrible stranger in, and stayed with her alone. Now you're gone, and nobody says a word about your troubled and exalted life. Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast. Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.

Written by Carl Sandburg | Chamfort THERE'S Chamfort. He's a sample. Locked himself in his library with a gun, Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye. And this Chamfort knew how to write And thousands read his books on how to live, But he himself didn't know How to die by force of his own hand--see? They found him a red pool on the carpet Cool as an April forenoon, Talking and talking gay maxims and grim epigrams. Well, he wore bandages over his nose and right eye, Drank coffee and chatted many years With men and women who loved him Because he laughed and daily dared Death: "Come and take me. "

Written by Robert William Service | The Faceless Man I'm dead. Officially I'm dead. Their hope is past. How long I stood as missing! Now, at last I'm dead. Look in my face -- no likeness can you see, No tiny trace of him they knew as "me". How terrible the change! Even my eyes are strange. So keyed are they to pain, That if I chanced to meet My mother in the street She'd look at me in vain. When she got home I think she'd say: "I saw the saddest sight to-day -- A poilu with no face at all. Far better in the fight to fall Than go through life like that, I think. Poor fellow! how he made me shrink. No face. Just eyes that seemed to stare At me with anguish and despair. This ghastly war! I'm almost cheered To think my son who disappeared, My boy so handsome and so gay, Might have come home like him to-day. " I'm dead. I think it's better to be dead When little children look at you with dread; And when you know your coming home again Will only give the ones who love you pain. Ah! who can help but shrink? One cannot blame. They see the hideous husk, not, not the flame Of sacrifice and love that burns within; While souls of satyrs, riddled through with sin, Have bodies fair and excellent to see. Mon Dieu! how different we all would be If this our flesh was ordained to express Our spirit's beauty or its ugliness. (Oh, you who look at me with fear to-day, And shrink despite yourselves, and turn away -- It was for you I suffered woe accurst; For you I braved red battle at its worst; For you I fought and bled and maimed and slew; For you, for you! For you I faced hell-fury and despair; The reeking horror of it all I knew: I flung myself into the furnace there; I faced the flame that scorched me with its glare; I drank unto the dregs the devil's brew -- Look at me now -- for you and you and you. . . . ) . . . . . I'm thinking of the time we said good-by: We took our dinner in Duval's that night, Just little Jacqueline, Lucette and I; We tried our very utmost to be bright. We laughed. And yet our eyes, they weren't gay. I sought all kinds of cheering things to say. "Don't grieve," I told them. "Soon the time will pass; My next permission will come quickly round; We'll all meet at the Gare du Montparnasse; Three times I've come already, safe and sound. " (But oh, I thought, it's harder every time, After a home that seems like Paradise, To go back to the vermin and the slime, The weariness, the want, the sacrifice. "Pray God," I said, "the war may soon be done, But no, oh never, never till we've won!") Then to the station quietly we walked; I had my rifle and my haversack, My heavy boots, my blankets on my back; And though it hurt us, cheerfully we talked. We chatted bravely at the platform gate. I watched the clock. My train must go at eight. One minute to the hour . . . we kissed good-by, Then, oh, they both broke down, with piteous cry. I went. . . . Their way was barred; they could not pass. I looked back as the train began to start; Once more I ran with anguish at my heart And through the bars I kissed my little lass. . . . Three years have gone; they've waited day by day. I never came. I did not even write. For when I saw my face was such a sight I thought that I had better . . . stay away. And so I took the name of one who died, A friendless friend who perished by my side. In Prussian prison camps three years of hell I kept my secret; oh, I kept it well! And now I'm free, but none shall ever know; They think I died out there . . . it's better so. To-day I passed my wife in widow's weeds. I brushed her arm. She did not even look. So white, so pinched her face, my heart still bleeds, And at the touch of her, oh, how I shook! And then last night I passed the window where They sat together; I could see them clear, The lamplight softly gleaming on their hair, And all the room so full of cozy cheer. My wife was sewing, while my daughter read; I even saw my portrait on the wall. I wanted to rush in, to tell them all; And then I cursed myself: "You're dead, you're dead!" God! how I watched them from the darkness there, Clutching the dripping branches of a tree, Peering as close as ever I might dare, And sobbing, sobbing, oh, so bitterly! But no, it's folly; and I mustn't stay. To-morrow I am going far away. I'll find a ship and sail before the mast; In some wild land I'll bury all the past. I'll live on lonely shores and there forget, Or tell myself that there has never been The gay and tender courage of Lucette, The little loving arms of Jacqueline. A man lonely upon a lonely isle, Sometimes I'll look towards the North and smile To think they're happy, and they both believe I died for France, and that I lie at rest; And for my glory's sake they've ceased to grieve, And hold my memory sacred. Ah! that's best. And in that thought I'll find my joy and peace As there alone I wait the Last Release.

Written by Emily Dickinson | If anybodys friend be dead If anybody's friend be dead It's sharpest of the theme The thinking how they walked alive -- At such and such a time -- Their costume, of a Sunday, Some manner of the Hair -- A prank nobody knew but them Lost, in the Sepulchre -- How warm, they were, on such a day, You almost feel the date -- So short way off it seems -- And now -- they're Centuries from that -- How pleased they were, at what you said -- You try to touch the smile And dip your fingers in the frost -- When was it -- Can you tell -- You asked the Company to tea -- Acquaintance -- just a few -- And chatted close with this Grand Thing That don't remember you -- Past Bows, and Invitations -- Past Interview, and Vow -- Past what Ourself can estimate -- That -- makes the Quick of Woe!