Get Your Premium Membership

Best Famous Lower Jaw Poems

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

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

See Also:
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Gauguin In The South Seas

 They have my own fear of the dark,

Tupapau - spirits of the dead they call it;

Returning late with oil I found fear of it

Had spread my vabine naked on the bed.



Manao-Taipapau means ‘she thinks of the spectre’

Or ‘the spectre is thinking of her’, either way

She is afraid; I marvel at a tongue so readily ambiguous,

Lying across her forked thigh.



I buy rum for her ‘many parents’, for her

One cheap dress a month suffices; in return

She gathers fish and wild-fruit from the blue

Mountain groves where no white man walks.

Once when I fished from the long canoes

A fish caught the hook in its lower jaw, laughing

I learnt this meant my vahine was unfaithful :

She answered ‘Beat me’ but I lay down by her side.

I bathe in ‘the stream of life’, naked to offend

The priestly beetles - Cezanne’s ‘red shout’ indeed.

Waiting for mail I accumulate bills, pictures and sores

Side by side, lying down alone in the dark.



Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry