Famous Itch Poems by Famous Poets

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

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If I Were Tickled By the Rub of Love

by Dylan Thomas
 If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.

Shall it be male or female? say the...Read more of this...

Ivas Pantoum

by Marilyn Hacker
 We pace each other for a long time.
I packed my anger with the beef jerky.
You are the baby on the mountain. I am 
in a cold stream where I led you.

I packed my anger with the beef jerky.
You are the woman sticking her tongue out 
in a cold stream where I led you.
You are the woman with spring water...Read more of this...

The Joy Of Being Poor

by Robert William Service
 I

Let others sing of gold and gear, the joy of being rich;
But oh, the days when I was poor, a vagrant in a ditch!
When every dawn was like a gem, so radiant and rare,
And I had but a single coat, and not a single care;
When I would feast right royally on bacon, bread and beer,
And dig into a stack...Read more of this...

All That I Owe The Fellows Of The Grave

by Dylan Thomas
 All that I owe the fellows of the grave
And all the dead bequeathed from pale estates
Lies in the fortuned bone, the flask of blood,
Like senna stirs along the ravaged roots.
O all I owe is all the flesh inherits,
My fathers' loves that pull upon my nerves,
My sisters tears that sing upon my head
My brothers' blood that salts my open wounds


Heir...Read more of this...

The Englishman In Italy

by Robert Browning
 (PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes— 
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—The flowers,...Read more of this...

symbolically concerned

by Rg Gregory
 dodona oak (the tree of life) sheds leaves
nutritious-which feeds blood and mind today
there’s not a jot (from which the present cleaves)
can be dispensed with – all life’s array
from first to last has leaf-mould in its clay
eve is that apple she took her bite from
the best and worst can’t thwart its dna
head-shaking won’t dislodge that first aplomb
which even now keeps...Read more of this...

Beggar To Beggar Cried

by William Butler Yeats
 'Time to put off the world and go somewhere
And find my health again in the sea air,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'And make my soul before my pate is bare.-

'And get a comfortable wife and house
To rid me of the devil in my shoes,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'And the worse devil that is between my thighs.'

And though I'd...Read more of this...

Hoodlums

by Carl Sandburg
 I AM a hoodlum, you are a hoodlum, we and all of us are a world of hoodlums—maybe so.
I hate and kill better men than I am, so do you, so do all of us—maybe—maybe so.
In the ends of my fingers the itch for another man’s neck, I want to see him hanging, one of dusk’s cartoons against the...Read more of this...

Who dares to take this life from me Knows no better

by T Wignesan
for Eric Mottram

"Nur wenn das Herz erschlossen,

Dann ist die Erde schön."

Goethe.

I

An important thing in living
Is to know when to go;
He who does not know this
Has not far to go,
Though death may come and go
When you do not know.


Come, give me your hand,
Together shoulder and cheek to shoulder
We'll go, sour kana in cheeks
And in the mornings cherry sticks
To gum: the infectious...Read more of this...

A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight

by James Joyce
 They mouth love's language. Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.
Love's breath in you is stale, worded or sung,
As sour as cat's breath,
Harsh of tongue.

This grey that stares
Lies not, stark skin and bone.
Leave greasy lips their kissing. None
Will choose her what you see to mouth upon.
Dire hunger holds his hour.
Pluck...Read more of this...

In Charidemum

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 YOU, Charidemus, who my cradle swung,
And watched me all the days that I was young;
You, at whose step the laziest slaves awake,
And both the bailiff and the butler quake;
The barber's suds now blacken with my beard,
And my rough kisses make the maids afeared;
But with reproach your awful eyebrows twitch,
And for the cane, I see, your fingers itch.
If something daintily...Read more of this...

This Night Slip In His Honor (after Komachi)

by Jennifer Reeser
 This night slip, in his honor
flipped inside out – of lace-
edged netting – is the color
of Shaka Zulu’s face;

of panther flower at midnight
where crow and boa doze;
of vertigo and stage fright
in frail Ophelia’s clothes.

I wear it as a symbol.
Its ripped, Chantilly trim
I fixed without a thimble,
was pricked and bled for him.

A torn band may be mended,
but what if he...Read more of this...

daft icarus

by Rg Gregory
 it began as a secret desire (an itch
in the marrow too vague to get through
to the bone) an idea that never could
make it as flesh - there wasn't a part of me
sane i could tell that would have spared
it a breath to get started
   so i slept

one midday i woke up with a bang - light
was bashing...Read more of this...

To A. L. Persuasions to Love

by Thomas Carew
 THINK not, 'cause men flattering say
You're fresh as April, sweet as May,
Bright as is the morning star,
That you are so ; or, though you are,
Be not therefore proud, and deem
All men unworthy your esteem :
For, being so, you lose the pleasure
Of being fair, since that rich treasure
Of rare beauty and sweet feature
Was bestow'd on you by nature
To be enjoy'd...Read more of this...

Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 Next, then, the peacock, gilt 
With all its feathers. Look, what gorgeous dyes 
Flow in the eyes! 
And how deep, lustrous greens are splashed and spilt 
Along the back, that like a sea-wave's crest 
Scatters soft beauty o'er th' emblazoned breast! 

A strange fowl! But most fit 
For feasts like this, whereby I honor one 
Pure as the sun!...Read more of this...

Hay for the Horses

by Gary Snyder
Hay for the Horses

He had driven half the night
 From far down San Joaquin
 Through Mariposa, up the
 Dangerous Mountain roads,
 And pulled in at eight a.m.
 With his big truckload of hay
             behind the barn.
 With winch and ropes and hooks
 We stacked the bales up clean
...Read more of this...

Our Eunuch Dreams

by Dylan Thomas
 I

Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light,
Of light and love the tempers of the heart,
Whack their boys' limbs,
And, winding-footed in their shawl and sheet,
Groom the dark brides, the widows of the night
Fold in their arms.

The shades of girls, all flavoured from their shrouds,
When sunlight goes are sundered from the worm,
The bones of men, the broken in their beds,
By...Read more of this...

Flies

by Robert William Service
 I never kill a fly because
I think that what we have of laws
To regulate and civilize
Our daily life - we owe to flies.

Apropos, I'll tell you of Choo, the spouse
Of the head of the hunters, Wung;
Such a beautiful cave they had for a house,
And a brood of a dozen young.
And Wung would start by the dawn's red light
On the...Read more of this...

Meditation On Saviors

by Robinson Jeffers
 I
When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element
 and smelt it like water,
Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a
 little troublesome, a little terrible.

I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death
 nor in a walled garden,
In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of...Read more of this...

The Wizard Way

by Aleister Crowley
 [Dedicated to General J.C.F. Fuller]


Velvet soft the night-star glowed 
Over the untrodden road, 
Through the giant glades of yew 
Where its ray fell light as dew 
Lighting up the shimmering veil 
Maiden pure and aery frail 
That the spiders wove to hide 
Blushes of the sylvan bride 
Earth, that trembled with delight 
At the male caress of Night. 

Velvet...Read more of this...

An Epicure

by Robert William Service
 Should you preserve white mice in honey
Don't use imported ones from China,
For though they cost you less in money
You'll find the Japanese ones finer.
But if Chinese, stuff them with spice,
Which certainly improves their savour,
And though the Canton mice are nice,
The Pekinese have finer flavour.

If you should pickle bracken shoots
The way the wily Japanese do,
Be sure to pluck then young...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

The Eye-Mote

by Sylvia Plath
 Blameless as daylight I stood looking
At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown,
Tails streaming against the green
Backdrop of sycamores. Sun was striking
White chapel pinnacles over the roofs,
Holding the horses, the clouds, the leaves

Steadily rooted though they were all flowing
Away to the left like reeds in a sea
When the splinter flew in and stuck my eye,
Needling it dark. Then...Read more of this...

Manteau Three

by Jorie Graham
 In the fairy tale the sky
 makes of itself a coat
because it needs you
 to put it 
on. How can it do this?
 It collects its motes. It condenses its sound-
track, all the pyrric escapes, the pilgrimages
 still unconsummated, 
the turreted thoughts of sky it slightly liquefies
 and droops, the hum of the yellowest day alive,

office-holders in their books,...Read more of this...

Sackcloth

by Brooks Haxton
 I made sackcloth also my garment; and I 
 became a proverb to them. They that sit in 
 the gate speak against me; and I was the 
 song of drunkards. Psalm 102

I made sackcloth my garment once, by cutting
arm and neck holes into a burlap bag.
A croker sack they called it. Sackdragger
they called the man who dragged...Read more of this...

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