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Famous Jobless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Hughes, Langston
...ILED BRISKET OF BEEF
 SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM
 WATERCRESS SALAD
 PEACH MELBA

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
 Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
 your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
 because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
 ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
 and live easy.
(Or haven't you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bit-
 ter bread of charity?)
Walk thr...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...rt o' Hunker gold.
And so although I didn't know her more that passin' by,
I told how Spike would seek my Boss, and jobless I would be;
She listened sympathetic like: "Zut! Baby, don't you cry;
I lend to you zee hundred bucks," said Montreal Maree.

Now though I zippered up my mug somehow the story spread
That I was playin' poker and my banker was Maree;
And when it got to Windy Bill, by Golly, he saw red,
And reachin' for his shootin' iron he started after me.
Fo...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record
Where the most watchful cooks go jobless
And the mayor's rôtisserie turns
Round of its own accord.

There's no career in the venture
Of riding against the lizard,
Himself withered these latter-days
To leaf-size from lack of action:
History's beaten the hazard.

The last crone got burnt up
More than eight decades back
With the love-hot herb, the talking cat,
But the children are bett...Read more of this...

by Darwish, Mahmoud
...facing the dusk and the cannon of time 
Close to the gardens of broken shadows, 
We do what prisoners do, 
And what the jobless do: 
We cultivate hope. 

*** 
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent 
For we closely watch the hour of victory: 
No night in our night lit up by the shelling 
Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us 
In the darkness of cellars. 

*** 
Here there is no "I". 
Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay. 

*...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...ace to lend support
for the causes skinhead spraycans could espouse.
The dead would want their desecrators caught!

Jobless though they are how can these kids,
even though their team's lost one more game,
believe that the 'Pakis', 'Niggers', even 'Yids'
sprayed on the tombstones here should bear the blame?

What is it that these crude words are revealing?
What is it that this aggro act implies?
Giving the dead their xenophobic feeling
or just a cri-de-coeur because man di...Read more of this...



by Bukowski, Charles
...wn, 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 to go out
and left their waste in 
strange places.
the jobless men went mad 
confined with
their once beautiful...Read more of this...

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