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Famous Crazy Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Crazy poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous crazy poems. These examples illustrate what a famous crazy poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Bukowski, Charles
...d your legs, Connie. I've really missed those
legs. I like the way you wear those high heels. They drive me crazy. These modern women
don't know what they're missing. The high heel shapes the calf, the thigh, the ass; it
puts rythm into the walk. It really turns me on!"
"You talk like a poet, George. Sometimes you talk like that. You are one hell of a
dishwasher."
"You know what I'd really like to do?" 
"What?" 
"I'd like to whip you with m...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...the earth, sun, animals—I have despised riches, 
I have given alms to every one that ask’d, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted
 my
 income and labor to others,
I have hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward the
 people,
 taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown, 
I have gone freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the
 mothers
 of families, 
I have read these leaves to myself in the open air—I have...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ering o'er 
The secondary temporary aims 
Which satisfy the gross taste you despise-- 
Where do you find his star?--his crazy trust 
God knows through what or in what? it's alive 
And shines and leads him, and that's all we want. 
Have we aught in our sober night shall point 
Such ends as his were, and direct the means 
Of working out our purpose straight as his, 
Nor bring a moment's trouble on success 
With after-care to justify the same? 
--Be a Napoleon, and yet disbe...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...rry spray;
Fiercely she faced us, dismayed but defiant,
Rushed at us bravely to scare us away.
Then my companion, a crazy young devil
(After, he told me he'd done it for fun)
Pretended to tremble, and raised his arm level,
And ere I could check him he blazed with his gun.

Headless she lay, from her neck the blood spouted,
And dappled her plumage, the poor, pretty thing!
Ten little chicks - oh, I know for I counted,
Came out and they tried to creep under her wing....Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...r>
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy sav...Read more of this...



by Hugo, Victor
...frank, and bold. 
 Said Mahaud: "Do you know how fortunate 
 You are?" "Yes, we are young at any rate— 
 Lovers half crazy—this is truth at least." 
 "And more, for you know Latin like a priest, 
 And Joss sings well." 
 "Ah, yes, our master true, 
 Yields us these gifts beyond the measure due." 
 "Your master!—who is he?" Mahaud exclaimed. 
 "Satan, we say—but Sin you'd think him named," 
 Said Zeno, veiling words in raillery. 
 "Do not laugh thus," she said with ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...how.
Ride out
any old way you please!
In this place everyone talks to his own mouth.
That's what it means to be crazy.
Those I loved best died of it—
the fool's disease....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...
 hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy 
 among the scholars of war, 
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & 
 publishing obscene odes on the windows of the 
 skull, 
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn- 
 ing their money in wastebaskets and listening 
 to the Terror through the wall, 
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through 
 Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, 
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in 
 Par...Read more of this...

by Hayden, Robert
...is a prayer for death, 
our and their own. Some try to starve themselves. 
Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter 
to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under." 

Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann: 

Standing to America, bringing home 
black gold, black ivory, black seed. 

Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, of his bones 
New England pews are made, those are altar lights that were his eyes. 

Jesus Saviour Pilot Me 
Over Life's Tempes...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...he's a poet.
he's also a doctor, a head-shrinker.
no blood involved that
way. he won't tell me whether I am crazy or
not-I don't have the
money.

he walks out with his cocktail glass
disappears for 2 hours, 3 hours,
then suddenly comes walking back in
unannounced
with the same cocktail glass
to make sure I haven't gotten hold of
something more precious than
Life itself.

my cheap green beer is killing
me. he shows heart (hurrah) and
gives me a little p...Read more of this...

by Silverstein, Shel
...in in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head....Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...stair, 
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 
Or startling on her desert throne 
The crazy Queen of Lebanon 
With claims fantastic as her own, 
Her tireless feet have held their way; 
And still, unrestful. bowed, and gray, 
She watches under Eastern skies, 
With hope each day renewed and fresh, 
The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, 
Whereof she dreams and prophecies! 

Where'er her troubled path may be, 
The Lord's sweet pity with her g...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial-- modern--all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown--

and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock ciga...Read more of this...

by Brooks, Gwendolyn
...go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.

And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...tched us pass; and lower, and where the long 
Rich galleries, lady-laden, weighed the necks 
Of dragons clinging to the crazy walls, 
Thicker than drops from thunder, showers of flowers 
Fell as we past; and men and boys astride 
On wyvern, lion, dragon, griffin, swan, 
At all the corners, named us each by name, 
Calling, "God speed!" but in the ways below 
The knights and ladies wept, and rich and poor 
Wept, and the King himself could hardly speak 
For grief, and all in mid...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...her
body. Her spirit was either very high or very low. There was no in between for Cass. Some
said she was crazy. The dull ones said that. The dull ones would never understand Cass. To
the men she was simply a sex machine and they didn't care whether she was crazy or not.
And Cass danced and flirted, kissed the men, but except for an instance or two, when it
came time to make it with Cass, Cass had somehow slipped away, eluded the men. 
Her si...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.

I took the oars: the Pilot's boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see,
The Devil knows how to row.'

And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land!
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.

'O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!'
The Hermit crossed his ...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...uldn't shake the sea noise out of my head,
the shell of my ears sang Maria Concepcion,
so I start salvage diving with a crazy Mick,
name O'Shaugnessy, and a limey named Head;
but this Carribean so choke with the dead
that when I would melt in emerald water,
whose ceiling rippled like a silk tent,
I saw them corals: brain, fire, sea fans,
dead-men's-fingers, and then, the dead men.
I saw that the powdery sand was their bones
ground white from Senegal to San Salvador,
so, I...Read more of this...

by Cohen, Leonard
...ve been alone too long. 
Let's be alone together. 
Let's see if we're that strong. 
Yeah let's do something crazy, 
something absolutely wrong 
while we're waiting 
for the miracle, for the miracle to come. 
Nothing left to do ... 
When you've fallen on the highway 
and you're lying in the rain, 
and they ask you how you're doing 
of course you'll say you can't complain -- 
If you're squeezed for information, 
that's when you've got to play it dumb...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...d the houses.
there were mops and bathroom towels,
and the rain often came up through the 
toilets:bubbling, brown, crazy,whirling,
and all the old cars stood in the streets,
cars that had problems starting on a 
sunny day,
and the jobless men stood
looking out the windows
at the old machines dying
like living things out there.
the jobless men,
failures in a failing time
were imprisoned in their houses with their
wives and children
and their
pets.
the pets refused...Read more of this...

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