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Best Famous Petroleum Poems

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

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Written by Ted Hughes | Create an image from this poem

Work and Play

 The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer,
A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage,
A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air.
But the serpent of cars that crawls through the dust In shimmering exhaust Searching to slake Its fever in ocean Will play and be idle or else it will bust.
The swallow of summer, the barbed harpoon, She flings from the furnace, a rainbow of purples, Dips her glow in the pond and is perfect.
But the serpent of cars that collapsed on the beach Disgorges its organs A scamper of colours Which roll like tomatoes Nude as tomatoes With sand in their creases To cringe in the sparkle of rollers and screech.
The swallow of summer, the seamstress of summer, She scissors the blue into shapes and she sews it, She draws a long thread and she knots it at the corners.
But the holiday people Are laid out like wounded Flat as in ovens Roasting and basting With faces of torment as space burns them blue Their heads are transistors Their teeth grit on sand grains Their lost kids are squalling While man-eating flies Jab electric shock needles but what can they do? They can climb in their cars with raw bodies, raw faces And start up the serpent And headache it homeward A car full of squabbles And sobbing and stickiness With sand in their crannies Inhaling petroleum That pours from the foxgloves While the evening swallow The swallow of summer, cartwheeling through crimson, Touches the honey-slow river and turning Returns to the hand stretched from under the eaves - A boomerang of rejoicing shadow.


Written by Donald Hall | Create an image from this poem

The Alligator Bride

 The clock of my days winds down.
The cat eats sparrows outside my window.
Once, she brought me a small rabbit which we devoured together, under the Empire Table while the men shrieked repossessing the gold umbrella.
Now the beard on my clock turns white.
My cat stares into dark corners missing her gold umbrella.
She is in love with the Alligator Bride.
Ah, the tiny fine white teeth! The Bride, propped on her tail in white lace stares from the holes of her eyes.
Her stuck-open mouth laughs at minister and people.
On bare new wood fourteen tomatoes, a dozen ears of corn, six bottles of white wine, a melon, a cat, broccoli and the Alligator Bride.
The color of bubble gum, the consistency of petroleum jelly, wickedness oozes from the palm of my left hand.
My cat licks it.
I watch the Alligator Bride.
Big houses like shabby boulders hold themselves tight in gelatin.
I am unable to daydream.
The sky is a gun aimed at me.
I pull the trigger.
The skull of my promises leans in a black closet, gapes with its good mouth for a teat to suck.
A bird flies back and forth in my house that is covered by gelatin and the cat leaps at it missing.
Under the Empire Table the Alligator Bride lies in her bridal shroud.
My left hand leaks on the Chinese carpet.

Book: Shattered Sighs