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Famous Insane Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Agustini, Delmira
..., my soul resigns.I know of lips withered with blasphemy and wine;After an orgy they kiss her trace in the lane.Insane ones who die kissing her image in lakes…Because she is light of innocence, because white thingsIlluminate her mysterious light, things taking on white,And even the blackest souls become uncertainly bright. ...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...yites? 
America why are your libraries full of tears? 
America when will you send your eggs to India? 
I'm sick of your insane demands. 
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I 
 need with my good looks? 
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not 
 the next world. 
Your machinery is too much for me. 
You made me want to be a saint. 
There must be some other way to settle this argument. 
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll com...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...n is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’ all right,
go ahead, enter their lives, I’ not jealous
because we’ never met. we got close once in
New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never
touched. so you went with the famous and wrote
about the famous,...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...erformers to the ring are led.
The sacred nature of the dance is lost, 
War is their cry, red war, at any cost.
Insane for blood they wait for no command, 
But plunge marauding through the frightened land.
Their demon hearts on devils' pleasures bent, 
For each new foe surprised, new torturing deaths invent.



XVIII.
Staked to the earth one helpless creature lies, 
Flames at his feet and splinters in his eyes.
Another groans with coals upon his breast...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...e are saying, we have our rights
and let them see the sandwiches and wine we bought

for we do not explain my husband's insane abuse
and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled
or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead.
Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use.

Both a little drunk in the afternoon
with the forgotten smart of August on our skin
we hold hands as if we were still children who trudge

up the wooden tower, on up...Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...g frog
watching us through the V
of your woolen legs.

Even so, I must admire your skill.
You are so gracefully insane.
We fidget in our plain chairs
and pretend to catalogue
our facts for your burly sorcery

or ignore your fat blind eyes
or the prince you ate yesterday
who was wise, wise, wise....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...oly Cas- 
 sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering 
 beggars holy the hideous human angels! 
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks 
 of the grandfathers of Kansas! 
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop 
 apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana 
 hipsters peace & junk & drums! 
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy 
 the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the 
 mysterious rivers of tears under the streets! 
Holy the lone juggerna...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...a prayer

O Mary, fragile mother, 
hear me, hear me now 
although I do not know your words. 
The black rosary with its silver Christ 
lies unblessed in my hand 
for I am the unbeliever. 
Each bead is round and hard between my fingers, 
a small black angel. 
O Mary, permit me this grace, 
this crossing over, 
although I am ugly, 
submerged in my...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...urning in the middle air,
Untouchable and untouchable.
The train is dragging itself, it is screaming ----
An animal
Insane for the destination,
The bloodspot,
The face at the end of the flare.
I shall bury the wounded like pupas,
I shall count and bury the dead.
Let their souls writhe in like dew,
Incense in my track.
The carriages rock, they are cradles.
And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces

Step up to you from the black car...Read more of this...

by Nesbitt, Kenn
...I think my dad is Dracula.
I know that sounds insane,
but listen for a moment and
allow me to explain.
We don’t live in a castle,
and we never sleep in caves.
But, still, there’s something weird
about the way my dad behaves.
I never see him go out
in the daytime when it’s light.
He sleeps all day till evening,
then he leaves the house at night.
He comes home in the morning
saying, “Man, I’m ...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...es and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At le...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...that the future held only two directions:

They were either going to open up a flea circus or commit

themselves to an insane asylum.

 So they talked about it while they drank wine.

 They talked about how to make little clothes for fleas by

pasting pieces of colored paper on their backs.

 They said the way that you trained fleas was to make them

dependent upon you for their food. This was done by letting them

feed off you at an appointed hour.

 The...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...t the masters become slaves!
Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling! let an idiot or
 insane person appear on each of the stands! 
Let the Asiatic, the African, the European, the American, and the Australian, go armed
 against
 the murderous stealthiness of each other! let them sleep armed! let none believe in good
 will! 
Let there be no unfashionable wisdom! let such be scorn’d and derided off from the
 earth! 
Let a floating cloud in the s...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...es of corpses, the livid faces of
 drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists, 
The gash’d bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door’d rooms, the
 sacred
 idiots, the new-born emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates, 
The night pervades them and infolds them.

The married couple sleep calmly in their bed—he with his palm on the hip of the wife,
 and
 she
 with her palm on the hip of the husband, 
The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in the...Read more of this...

by Atwood, Margaret
...y into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.


That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;


guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air


tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows...Read more of this...

by Eluard, Paul
...ings of birds 
And on the mill of shadows 
I write your name 

On every burst of dawn 
On the sea, on the boats 
On the insane mountain 
I write your name 

On the foam of clouds 
On the sweat of the storm 
On the rain, thick and insipid 
I write your name 

On the shimmering shapes 
On the colorful bells 
On the physical truth 
I write your name

On the alert pathways 
On the wide-spread roads 
On the overflowing places 
I write your name 

On the lamp that is ignited 
On th...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...parrots to call
The plot-hatching prince of the tigers,
To your throne by the red-clay wall.

Thus came that genius insane:
Spitting and slinking,
Sneering and vain,
He sprawled to your grassy throne, drunk on The Leaf,
The drug that was cunning and splendor and grief.
He had fled from the mammoth by day,
He had blasted the mammoth by night,
War was his drunkenness,
War was his dreaming,
War was his love and his play.
And he hissed at your heavenly glory
While his...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...right to talk of them than Robert Southey. I have also treated them more tolerantly. The way in which that poor insane creature, the Laureate, deals about his judgments in the next world, is like his own judgment in this. If it was not completely ludicrous, it would be something worse. I don't think that there is much more to say at present. 

QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS 

P.S. — It is possible that some readers may object, in these objectionable times, to t...Read more of this...

by Shakur, Tupac
...Dreaming of riches in the position of making a difference
Politicians is hypocrites
They don't want to listen
If I'm insane it's the fame
I ain't about to change
It ain't nothing like the game
It's just me against the world ...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...bears-a mythology 
he cannot inherit. 

Will he later hallucinate 
his gods? Waking 
among mysteries with 
an insane gleam 
of recollection? 

The recognition- 
something so rare 
in his soul, 
met only in dreams 
-nostalgias 
of another life. 

A question of the soul. 
And the injured 
losing their injury 
in their innocence 
-a cock, a cross, 
an excellence of love. 

And the father grieves 
in flophouse 
complexities of memory 
a t...Read more of this...

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