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Best Famous Instance Poems

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Written by David Berman | Create an image from this poem

Self-Portrait At 28

 I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in this chair
with my eyes closed.

It is a certain hill
the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill"
and if the apocalypse turns out
to be a world-wide nervous breakdown
if our five billion minds collapse at once
well I'd call that a surprise ending
and this hill would still be beautiful
a place I wouldn't mind dying
alone or with you.

I am trying to get at something
and I want to talk very plainly to you
so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
You see there is a window by my desk
I stare out when I am stuck
though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write
and I don't know why I keep staring at it.

My childhood hasn't made good material either
mostly being a mulch of white minutes
with a few stand out moments,
popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer
a certain amount of pride at school
everytime they called it "our sun"
and playing football when the only play
was "go out long" are what stand out now.

If squeezed for more information
I can remember old clock radios
with flipping metal numbers
and an entree called Surf and Turf.

As a way of getting in touch with my origins
every night I set the alarm clock
for the time I was born so that waking up
becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do
 is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like
 when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn
 the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it.

II two

I can't remember being born
and no one else can remember it either
even the doctor who I met years later
at a cocktail party.
It's one of the little disappointments
that makes you think about getting away
going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables
and taking a room on the square
with a landlady whose hands are scored
by disinfectant, telling the people you meet
that you are from Alaska, and listen
to what they have to say about Alaska
until you have learned much more about Alaska
than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.

Sometimes I am buying a newspaper
in a strange city and think
"I am about to learn what it's like to live here."
Oftentimes there is a news item
about the complaints of homeowners
who live beside the airport
and I realize that I read an article
on this subject nearly once a year
and always receive the same image.


I am in bed late at night
in my house near the airport
listening to the jets fly overhead
a strange wife sleeping beside me.
In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation
of various cold medicine commercial sets
(there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand).

I know these recurring news articles are clues,
flaws in the design though I haven't figured out
how to string them together yet,
but I've begun to notice that the same people
are dying over and over again,
for instance Minnie Pearl
who died this year
for the fourth time in four years.

III three

Today is the first day of Lent
and once again I'm not really sure what it is.
How many more years will I let pass
before I take the trouble to ask someone?


It reminds of this morning
when you were getting ready for work.
I was sitting by the space heater
numbly watching you dress
and when you asked why I never wear a robe
I had so many good reasons
I didn't know where to begin.


If you were cool in high school
you didn't ask too many questions.
You could tell who'd been to last night's
big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.
You didn't have to ask
and that's what cool was:
the ability to deduct
to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness
means not asking when you don't know,
which is why kids grow ever more stupid.


A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises
to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness
of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying
for a letter from the class stoner
ten years on but...

Do you remember the way the girls
would call out "love you!"
conveniently leaving out the "I"
as if they didn't want to commit
to their own declarations.

I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept
and hope you won't get uncomfortable
if I should go into some deeper stuff here.

IV four

There are things I've given up on
like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older
and the human race as a group
has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now.

It's just that our advances are irrepressible.
Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands.
It makes people too self-conscious about the past,
though try explaining that to a kid.

I'm not saying it should be this way.

All this new technology
will eventually give us new feelings
that will never completely displace the old ones
leaving everyone feeling quite nervous
and split in two.

We will travel to Mars
even as folks on Earth
are still ripping open potato chip
bags with their teeth.

Why? I don't have the time or intelligence
to make all the connections
like my friend Gordon
(this is a true story)
who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts
and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree
until I brought it up.
He'd never broken the name down to its parts.
By then it was too late.
He had moved to Coral Gables.

V five

The hill out my window is still looking beautiful
suffused in a kind of gold national park light
and it seems to say,
I'm sorry the world could not possibly
use another poem about Orpheus
but I'm available if you're not working
on a self-portrait or anything.

I'm watching my dog have nightmares,
twitching and whining on the office floor
and I try to imagine what beast
has cornered him in the meadow
where his dreams are set.

I'm just letting the day be what it is:
a place for a large number of things
to gather and interact --
not even a place but an occasion
a reality for real things.

Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic
or religious with this piece:
"They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic
or religious," but these are valid topics
and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor
possibly dreaming of me
that part of me that would beat a dog
for no good reason
no reason that a dog could see.


I am trying to get at something so simple
that I have to talk plainly
so the words don't disfigure it
and if it turns out that what I say is untrue
then at least let it be harmless
like a leaky boat in the reeds
that is bothering no one.

VI six

I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories,
many of them having blended with sentimental
telephone and margarine commercials
plainly ruined by Madison Avenue
though no one seems to call the advertising world
"Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved?
Let's get an update on this.

But first I have some business to take care of.

I walked out to the hill behind our house
which looks positively Alaskan today
and it would be easier to explain this
if I had a picture to show you
but I was with our young dog
and he was running through the tall grass
like running through the tall grass
is all of life together
until a bird calls or he finds a beer can
and that thing fills all the space in his head.

You see,
his mind can only hold one thought at a time
and when he finally hears me call his name
he looks up and cocks his head
and for a single moment
my voice is everything:

Self-portrait at 28.


Written by Galway Kinnell | Create an image from this poem

Oatmeal

 I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone. 
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health 
 if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have 
 breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary 
 companion. 
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge, 
 as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him: 
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, 
 and unsual willingness to disintigrate, oatmeal should 
 not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat 
 it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had 
 enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John 
 Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as 
 wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something 
 from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the 
 "Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words "Oi 'ad 
 a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through 
 his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his 
 pocket, 
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas, 
 and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they 
 made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if 
 they got it right. 
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket 
 through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas, 
 and the way here and there a line will go into the 
 configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up 
 and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark, 
 causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about 
 the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some 
 stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal 
 alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words 
 lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there 
 is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started 
 on it, and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their 
 clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours," 
 came to him while eating oatmeal alone. 
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering 
 furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneaously 
 gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh 
 to join me.
Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator

 The end of the affair is always death. 
She's my workshop. Slippery eye, 
out of the tribe of myself my breath 
finds you gone. I horrify 
those who stand by. I am fed. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
Finger to finger, now she's mine. 
She's not too far. She's my encounter. 
I beat her like a bell. I recline 
in the bower where you used to mount her. 
You borrowed me on the flowered spread. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
Take for instance this night, my love, 
that every single couple puts together 
with a joint overturning, beneath, above, 
the abundant two on sponge and feather, 
kneeling and pushing, head to head. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
I break out of my body this way, 
an annoying miracle. Could I 
put the dream market on display? 
I am spread out. I crucify. 
My little plum is what you said. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
Then my black-eyed rival came. 
The lady of water, rising on the beach, 
a piano at her fingertips, shame 
on her lips and a flute's speech. 
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
She took you the way a women takes 
a bargain dress off the rack 
and I broke the way a stone breaks. 
I give back your books and fishing tack. 
Today's paper says that you are wed. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
The boys and girls are one tonight. 
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. 
They take off shoes. They turn off the light. 
The glimmering creatures are full of lies. 
They are eating each other. They are overfed. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
Written by R S Thomas | Create an image from this poem

Welsh Landscape

 To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for instance,
The soft consonants
Strange to the ear.
There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon,
And thick ambush of shadows,
Hushed at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song. To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for instance,
The soft consonants
Strange to the ear.
There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon,
And thick ambush of shadows,
Hushed at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song.
Written by Pablo Neruda | Create an image from this poem

Saddest Poem

 I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. 

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance." 

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. 

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky. 

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. 

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. 

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me. 

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her. 

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me. 

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer. 

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear. 

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes. 

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long. 

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her. 

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.


Written by Vladimir Mayakovsky | Create an image from this poem

My Soviet Passport

 I'd tear
 like a wolf
 at bureaucracy.
For mandates
 my respect's but the slightest.
To the devil himself
 I'd chuck without mercy
every red-taped paper.
 But this ...
Down the long front
 of coupés and cabins
File the officials
 politely.
They gather up passports
 and I give in
My own vermilion booklet.
For one kind of passport -
smiling lips part
For others -
 an attitude scornful.
They take
 with respect, for instance,
 the passport
From a sleeping-car
English Lionel.
The good fellows eyes
 almost slip like pips
when,
 bowing as low as men can,
they take,
 as if they were taking a tip,
the passport
 from an American.
At the Polish,
 they dolefully blink and wheeze
in dumb
 police elephantism -
where are they from,
 and what are these
geographical novelties?
And without a turn
 of their cabbage heads,
their feelings
 hidden in lower regions,
they take without blinking,
 the passports from Swedes
and various
 old Norwegians.
Then sudden
 as if their mouths were
 aquake
those gentlemen almost
 whine
Those very official gentlemen
 take
that red-skinned passport
 of mine.
Take-
 like a bomb
 take - like a hedgehog,
like a razor
 double-edge stropped,
take -
 like a rattlesnake huge and long
with at least
 20 fangs
 poison-tipped.
The porter's eyes
 give a significant flick
(I'll carry your baggage
 for nix,
 mon ami...)
The gendarmes enquiringly
 look at the tec,
the tec, -
 at the gendarmerie.
With what delight
 that gendarme caste
would have me
 strung-up and whipped raw
because I hold
 in my hands
 hammered-fast
sickle-clasped
 my red Soviet passport.
I'd tear
 like a wolf
 at bureaucracy.
For mandates
 my respect's but the slightest.
To the devil himself
 I'd chuck
 without mercy
every red-taped paper,
 But this ...
I pull out
 of my wide trouser-pockets
duplicate
of a priceless cargo.
 You now:
read this
 and envy,
 I'm a citizen
of the Soviet Socialist Union!


Transcribed: by Liviu Iacob.
Written by Langston Hughes | Create an image from this poem

Madam And The Phone Bill

 You say I O.K.ed
LONG DISTANCE?
O.K.ed it when?
My goodness, Central
That was then!

I'm mad and disgusted
With that ***** now.
I don't pay no REVERSED
CHARGES nohow.

You say, I will pay it--
Else you'll take out my phone?
You better let
My phone alone.

I didn't ask him
To telephone me.
Roscoe knows darn well
LONG DISTANCE
Ain't free.

If I ever catch him,
Lawd, have pity!
Calling me up
From Kansas City.

Just to say he loves me!
I knowed that was so.
Why didn't he tell me some'n
I don't know?

For instance, what can
Them other girls do
That Alberta K. Johnson
Can't do--and more, too?

What's that, Central?
You say you don't care
Nothing about my
Private affair?

Well, even less about your
PHONE BILL, does I care!

Un-humm-m! . . . Yes!
You say I gave my O.K.?
Well, that O.K. you may keep--

But I sure ain't gonna pay!
Written by Denise Duhamel | Create an image from this poem

Sex With A Famous Poet

 I had sex with a famous poet last night 
and when I rolled over and found myself beside him I shuddered 
because I was married to someone else, 
because I wasn't supposed to have been drinking,
because I was in fancy hotel room
I didn't recognize. I would have told you 
right off this was a dream, but recently 
a friend told me, write about a dream, 
lose a reader and I didn't want to lose you
right away. I wanted you to hear
that I didn't even like the poet in the dream, that he has 
four kids, the youngest one my age, and I find him 
rather unattractive, that I only met him once,
that is, in real life, and that was in a large group 
in which I barely spoke up. He disgusted me 
with his disparaging remarks about women.
He even used the word "Jap"
which I took as a direct insult to my husband who's Asian. 
When we were first dating, I told him
"You were talking in your sleep last night
and I listened, just to make sure you didn't 
call out anyone else's name." My future-husband said
that he couldn't be held responsible for his subconscious, 
which worried me, which made me think his dreams
were full of blond vixens in rabbit-fur bikinis.
but he said no, he dreamt mostly about boulders 
and the ocean and volcanoes, dangerous weather 
he witnessed but could do nothing to stop. 
And I said, "I dream only of you,"
which was romantic and silly and untrue. 
But I never thought I'd dream of another man--
my husband and I hadn't even had a fight,
my head tucked sweetly in his armpit, my arm 
around his belly, which lifted up and down
all night, gently like water in a lake.
If I passed that famous poet on the street,
he would walk by, famous in his sunglasses 
and blazer with the suede patches at the elbows, 
without so much as a glance in my direction.
I know you're probably curious about who the poet is, 
so I should tell you the clues I've left aren't 
accurate, that I've disguised his identity, 
that you shouldn't guess I bet it's him...
because you'll never guess correctly
and even if you do, I won't tell you that you have. 
I wouldn't want to embarrass a stranger 
who is, after all, probably a nice person, 
who was probably just having a bad day when I met him, 
who is probably growing a little tired of his fame--
which my husband and I perceive as enormous, 
but how much fame can an American poet 
really have, let's say, compared to a rock star 
or film director of equal talent? Not that much,
and the famous poet knows it, knows that he's not 
truly given his due. Knows that many 
of these young poets tugging on his sleeve 
are only pretending to have read all his books.
But he smiles anyway, tries to be helpful. 
I mean, this poet has to have some redeeming qualities, right? 
For instance, he writes a mean iambic. 
Otherwise, what was I doing in his arms.
Written by Edward Taylor | Create an image from this poem

Like A Scarf

 The directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing,
more likely they were the random associations
and confused ramblings of a lunatic.
We arrived three hours late for lunch
and the lunatics were stacked up on their shelves,
quite neatly, I might add, giving credit where credit is due.
The orderlies were clearly very orderly, and they
should receive all the credit that is their due.
When I asked one of the doctors for a corkscrew
he produced one without a moment's hesitation.
And it was a corkscrew of the finest craftsmanship,
very shiny and bright not unlike the doctor himself.
"We'll be conducting our picnic under the great oak
beginning in just a few minutes, and if you'd care
to join us we'd be most honored. However, I understand
you have your obligations and responsibilities,
and if you would prefer to simply visit with us
from time to time, between patients, our invitation
is nothing if not flexible. And, we shan't be the least slighted
or offended in any way if, due to your heavy load,
we are altogether deprived of the pleasure
of exchanging a few anecdotes, regarding the mentally ill,
depraved, diseased, the purely knavish, you in your bughouse,
if you'll pardon my vernacular, O yes, and we in our crackbrain
daily rounds, there are so many gone potty everywhere we roam,
not to mention in one's own home, dead moonstruck.
Well, well, indeed we would have many notes to compare
if you could find the time to join us after your injections."
My invitation was spoken in the evenest tones,
but midway though it I began to suspect I was addressing
an imposter. I returned the corkscrew in a nonthreatening manner.
What, for instance, I asked myself, would a doctor, a doctor of the mind,
be doing with a cordscrew in his pocket?
This was a very sick man, one might even say dangerous.
I began moving away cautiously, never taking my eyes off of him.
His right eyelid was twitching guiltily, or at least anxiously,
and his smock flapping slightly in the wind.
Several members of our party were mingling with the nurses
down by the duck pond, and my grip on the situation
was loosening, the planks in my picnic platform were rotting.
I was thinking about the potato salad in an unstable environment.
A weeping spell was about to overtake me.
I was very close to howling and gnashing the gladiola.
I noticed the great calm of the clouds overhead.
And below, several nurses appeared to me in need of nursing.
The psychopaths were stirring from their naps,
I should say, their postprandial slumbers.
They were lumbering through the pines like inordinately sad moose.
Who could eat liverwurst at a time like this?
But, then again, what's a picnic without pathos?
Lacking a way home, I adjusted the flap in my head and duck-walked
down to the pond and into the pond and began gliding
around in circles, quacking, quacking like a scarf.
Inside the belly of that image I began
recycling like a sorry whim, sincerest regrets
are always best.
Written by Alexander Pushkin | Create an image from this poem

Solitude

 He's blessed, who lives in peace, that's distant
From the ignorant fobs with calls,
Who can provide his every instance
With dreams, or labors, or recalls;
To whom the fate sends friends in score,
Who hides himself by Savior's back
From bashful fools, which lull and bore,
And from the impudent ones, which wake.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things