Get Your Premium Membership

Best Famous Infectious Poems

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

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

See Also:
Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Break Away

 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up as we did yearly
under the crayoned-in sun.
The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break into two cans ready for recycling, flattened tin humans and a tin law, even for my twenty-five years of hanging on by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.
The gray room: Judge, lawyer, witness and me and invisible Skeezix, and all the other torn enduring the bewilderments of their division.
Your daisies have come on the day of my divorce.
They arrive like round yellow fish, sucking with love at the coral of our love.
Yet they wait, in their short time, like little utero half-borns, half killed, thin and bone soft.
They breathe the air that stands for twenty-five illicit days, the sun crawling inside the sheets, the moon spinning like a tornado in the washbowl, and we orchestrated them both, calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS.
There was a song, our song on your cassette, that played over and over and baptised the prodigals.
It spoke the unspeakable, as the rain will on an attic roof, letting the animal join its soul as we kneeled before a miracle-- forgetting its knife.
The daisies confer in the old-married kitchen papered with blue and green chefs who call out pies, cookies, yummy, at the charcoal and cigarette smoke they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all-- the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love (If one could call such handfuls of fists and immobile arms that!) and on this day my world rips itself up while the country unfastens along with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief, as in me-- the legal rift-- as on might do with the daisies but does not for they stand for a love undergoihng open heart surgery that might take if one prayed tough enough.
And yet I demand, even in prayer, that I am not a thief, a mugger of need, and that your heart survive on its own, belonging only to itself, whole, entirely whole, and workable in its dark cavern under your ribs.
I pray it will know truth, if truth catches in its cup and yet I pray, as a child would, that the surgery take.
I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass, glass coming through the telephone that is breaking slowly, day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love like a lifejacket and we float, jacket and I, we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear and it is safe, safe far too long! And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window and peer down at the moon in the pond and know that beauty has walked over my head, into this bedroom and out, flowing out through the window screen, dropping deep into the water to hide.
I will observe the daisies fade and dry up wuntil they become flour, snowing themselves onto the table beside the drone of the refrigerator, beside the radio playing Frankie (as often as FM will allow) snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling-- as twenty-five years split from my side like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.
It is six P.
M.
as I water these tiny weeds and their little half-life, their numbered days that raged like a secret radio, recalling love that I picked up innocently, yet guiltily, as my five-year-old daughter picked gum off the sidewalk and it became suddenly an elastic miracle.
For me it was love found like a diamond where carrots grow-- the glint of diamond on a plane wing, meaning: DANGER! THICK ICE! but the good crunch of that orange, the diamond, the carrot, both with four million years of resurrecting dirt, and the love, although Adam did not know the word, the love of Adam obeying his sudden gift.
You, who sought me for nine years, in stories made up in front of your naked mirror or walking through rooms of fog women, you trying to forget the mother who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss through the keyhole, you who wrote out your own birth and built it with your own poems, your own lumber, your own keyhole, into the trunk and leaves of your manhood, you, who fell into my words, years before you fell into me (the other, both the Camp Director and the camper), you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams, and calls and letters and once a luncheon, and twice a reading by me for you.
But I wouldn't! Yet this year, yanking off all past years, I took the bait and was pulled upward, upward, into the sky and was held by the sun-- the quick wonder of its yellow lap-- and became a woman who learned her own shin and dug into her soul and found it full, and you became a man who learned his won skin and dug into his manhood, his humanhood and found you were as real as a baker or a seer and we became a home, up into the elbows of each other's soul, without knowing-- an invisible purchase-- that inhabits our house forever.
We were blessed by the House-Die by the altar of the color T.
V.
and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage, a tiny marriage called belief, as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy, so close to absolute, so daft within a year or two.
The daisies have come for the last time.
And I who have, each year of my life, spoken to the tooth fairy, believing in her, even when I was her, am helpless to stop your daisies from dying, although your voice cries into the telephone: Marry me! Marry me! and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight: The love is in dark trouble! The love is starting to die, right now-- we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.
I see two deaths, and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart, and though I willed one away in court today and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other, they both die like waves breaking over me and I am drowning a little, but always swimming among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death, I wade through the smell of their cancer and recognize the prognosis, its cartful of loss-- I say now, you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on! and the dead city of my marriage seems less important than the fact that the daisies came weekly, over and over, likes kisses that can't stop themselves.
There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.
Let one be forgotten-- Bury it! Wall it up! But let me not forget the man of my child-like flowers though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior, he remains, his fingers the marvel of fourth of July sparklers, his furious ice cream cones of licking, remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.
For the rest that is left: name it gentle, as gentle as radishes inhabiting their short life in the earth, name it gentle, gentle as old friends waving so long at the window, or in the drive, name it gentle as maple wings singing themselves upon the pond outside, as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond, that night that it was ours, when our bodies floated and bumped in moon water and the cicadas called out like tongues.
Let such as this be resurrected in all men whenever they mold their days and nights as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine and planted the seed that dives into my God and will do so forever no matter how often I sweep the floor.


Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

This Compost

 1
SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest; 
I withdraw from the still woods I loved; 
I will not go now on the pastures to walk; 
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; 
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.
O how can it be that the ground does not sicken? How can you be alive, you growths of spring? How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you? Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations; Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day—or perhaps I am deceiv’d; I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath; I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person—Yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noislessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs, The new-born of animals appear—the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk—the lilacs bloom in the door-yards; The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.
What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever.
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard—that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.
3 Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses, It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.
Written by T Wignesan | Create an image from this poem

Who dares to take this life from me Knows no better

for Eric Mottram

"Nur wenn das Herz erschlossen,

Dann ist die Erde schön.
" Goethe.
I An important thing in living Is to know when to go; He who does not know this Has not far to go, Though death may come and go When you do not know.
Come, give me your hand, Together shoulder and cheek to shoulder We'll go, sour kana in cheeks And in the mornings cherry sticks To gum: the infectious chilli smiles Over touch-me-not thorns, crushing snails From banana leaves, past Clawing outstretched arms of the bougainvilias To stone the salt-bite mangoes.
Tread carefully through this durian kampong For the ripe season has pricked many a sole.
II la la la tham'-pong Let's go running intermittent To the spitting, clucking rubber fruit And bamboo lashes through the silent graves, Fresh sod, red mounds, knee stuck, incensing joss sticks All night long burning, exhuming, expelling the spirit.
Let's scour, hiding behind the lowing boughs of the hibiscus Skirting the school-green parapet thorny fields.
Let us now squawk, piercing the sultry, humid blanket In the shrill wakeful tarzan tones, Paddle high on.
the swings Naked thighs, testicles dry.
Let us now vanish panting on the climbing slopes Bare breasted, steaming rolling with perspiration, Biting with lalang burn.
Let us now go and stand under the school Water tap, thrashing water to and fro.
Then steal through the towkay's Barbed compound to pluck the hairy Eyeing rambutans, blood red, parang in hand, And caoutchouc pungent with peeling.
Now scurrying through the estate glades Crunching, kicking autumnal rubber leavings, Kneading, rolling milky latex balls, Now standing to water by the corner garden post.
III This is the land of the convectional rains Which vie on the monsoon back scrubbing streets This is the land at half-past four The rainbow rubs the chilli face of the afternoon And an evening-morning pervades the dripping, weeping Rain tree, and gushing, tumbling, sewerless rain drains Sub-cutaneously eddy sampan fed, muddy, fingerless rivers Down with crocodile logs to the Malacca Sea.
This is the land of stately dipterocarp, casuarina And coco-palms reeding north easterly over ancient rites Of turtle bound breeding sands.
This is the land of the chignoned swaying bottoms Of sarong-kebaya, sari and cheongsam.
The residual perch of promises That threw the meek in within The legs of the over-eager fledgelings.
The land since the Carnatic conquerors Shovelling at the bottom of the offering mountains The bounceable verdure brought to its bowers The three adventurers.
A land frozen in a thousand Climatic, communal ages Wags its primordial bushy tail to the Himalayas Within a three cornered monsoon sea - In reincarnate churches And cracker carousels.
The stranglehold of boasting strutting pedigrees And infidel hordes of marauding thieves, Where pullulant ideals Long rocketed in other climes Ride flat-foot on flat tyres.
IV Let us go then, hurrying by Second show nights and jogget parks Listening to the distant whinings of wayangs Down the sidewalk frying stalls on Campbell Road Cheong-Kee mee and queh teow plates Sateh, rojak and kachang puteh (rediffusion vigil plates) Let us then dash to the Madras stalls To the five cent lye chee slakes.
la la la step stepping Each in his own inordinate step Shuffling the terang bulan.
Blindly buzzes the bee Criss-crossing Weep, rain tree, weep The grass untrampled with laughter In the noonday sobering shade.
Go Cheena-becha Kling-qui Sakai V Has it not occurred to you how I sat with you dear sister, counting the chicking back of the evening train by the window sill and then got up to wind my way down the snake infested rail to shoo shoo the cows home to brood while you gee geaed the chicks to coop and did we not then plan of a farm a green milking farm to warm the palm then turned to scratch the itch over in our minds lay down on the floors, mat aside our thoughts to cushion heads whilst dug tapioca roots heaped the dream and we lay scrapping the kernel-less fiber shelled coconuts O Bhama, my goatless daughter kid how I nursed you with the callow calves those mutual moments forced in these common lives and then, that day when they sold you the blistering shirtless sun never flinching an eye, defiant I stood caressing your creamy coat and all you could say was a hopeless baaa.
.
a.
.
aa and then, then, that day as we came over the mountains two kids you led to the thorny brush, business bent the eye-balling bharata natyam VI O masters of my fading August dream For should you take this life from me Know you any better Than when children we have joyously romped Down and deep in the August river Washing on the mountain tin.
Now on the growing granite's precipitous face In our vigilant wassail Remember the children downstream playing Where your own little voices are speechless lingering Let it not be simply said that a river flows to flourish a land More than that he who is high at the source take heed: For a river putrid in the cradle is worse than the plunging flooding rain.
And the eclectic monsoons may have come Have gathered and may have gone While the senses still within torrid membranes thap-po-ng thap-pong thap-pong
Written by James A Emanuel | Create an image from this poem

False Notions Fears And Other Things Of Wood

 Repeatedly, that sturdy stump in me
bears up like stone,
beneath some ritual I see:
the blinding axe
swings up, holds,
that moment of its weightlessness
inscrutable
till I confirm the arm is mine;
I will it, grip,
feel moist the swelling handle,
the shudder rude,
the difference fallen.
Toward that chopping block I carry in me woodthings— infectious undergrowth pretending upwards through each stem and branch of me— all so certain of themselves they practice, like pains, the craft of being.
They try to wrench away before we reach that stump, my woodthings and I, they weakening in its brightness, in my luminous saying "I must go, must go to the chopping block.
" They know the brutal business of my thinking; I know they have no charity nor memory to return the way they came— came not from wilderness, nor forest, nor living trees.
Their craft and strength I test— and mine— at the chopping block.
Written by Robert Southey | Create an image from this poem

To The Genius Of Africa

 O thou who from the mountain's height
Roll'st down thy clouds with all their weight
Of waters to old Niles majestic tide;
Or o'er the dark sepulchral plain
Recallest thy Palmyra's ancient pride,
Amid whose desolated domes
Secure the savage chacal roams,
Where from the fragments of the hallow'd fane
The Arabs rear their miserable homes!

Hear Genius hear thy children's cry!
Not always should'st thou love to brood
Stern o'er the desert solitude
Where seas of sand toss their hot surges high;
Nor Genius should the midnight song
Detain thee in some milder mood
The palmy plains among
Where Gambia to the torches light
Flows radiant thro' the awaken'd night.
Ah, linger not to hear the song! Genius avenge thy children's wrong! The Daemon COMMERCE on your shore Pours all the horrors of his train, And hark! where from the field of gore Howls the hyena o'er the slain! Lo! where the flaming village fires the skies! Avenging Power awake--arise! Arise thy children's wrong redress! Ah heed the mother's wretchedness When in the hot infectious air O'er her sick babe she bows opprest-- Ah hear her when the Christians tear The drooping infant from her breast! Whelm'd in the waters he shall rest! Hear thou the wretched mother's cries, Avenging Power awake! arise! By the rank infected air That taints those dungeons of despair, By those who there imprison'd die Where the black herd promiscuous lie, By the scourges blacken'd o'er And stiff and hard with human gore, By every groan of deep distress By every curse of wretchedness, By all the train of Crimes that flow From the hopelessness of Woe, By every drop of blood bespilt, By Afric's wrongs and Europe's guilt, Awake! arise! avenge! And thou hast heard! and o'er their blood-fed plains Swept thine avenging hurricanes; And bade thy storms with whirlwind roar Dash their proud navies on the shore; And where their armies claim'd the fight Wither'd the warrior's might; And o'er the unholy host with baneful breath There Genius thou hast breath'd the gales of Death.
So perish still the robbers of mankind! What tho' from Justice bound and blind Inhuman Power has snatch'd the sword! What tho' thro' many an ignominious age That Fiend with desolating rage The tide of carnage pour'd! Justice shall yet unclose her eyes, Terrific yet in wrath arise, And trample on the tyrant's breast, And make Oppresion groan opprest.