Famous Kicked Out Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Grindstone

by Robert Frost
 Having a wheel and four legs of its own
Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone
To get it anywhere that I can see.
These hands have helped it go, and even race;
Not all the motion, though, they ever lent,
Not all tke miles it may have thought it went,
Have got it one step from the starting place.
It stands beside the same old apple...Read more of this...

Y was a Youth who kicked

by Edward Lear
Y  was a Youth, who kickedAnd screamed and cried like mad; Papa he said, "Your conduct isAbominably bad!" ...Read more of this...

The Ballad of Rudolph Reed

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 Rudolph Reed was oaken.
His wife was oaken too.
And his two good girls and his good little man
Oakened as they grew.

"I am not hungry for berries.
I am not hungry for bread.
But hungry hungry for a house
Where at night a man in bed

"May never hear the plaster
Stir as if in pain.
May never hear the roaches
Falling like fat rain.

"Where never wife and...Read more of this...

Waves

by Katherine Mansfield
 I saw a tiny God
Sitting
Under a bright blue umbrella
That had white tassels
And forked ribs of gold.
Below him His little world
Lay open to the sun.
The shadow of His hat
Lay upon a city.
When he stretched forth His hand
A lake became a dark tremble.
When he kicked up His foot
It became night in the mountain passes.

But thou art small!
There are gods far greater...Read more of this...

Postcards

by Margaret Atwood
 I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?
The palm trees on the reverse
are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
What we have are the usual
fractured coke bottles and the smell
of backed-up drains, too sweet,
like a mango on the verge
of rot, which we have also.
The air clear sweat, mosquitoes
& their tracks; birds & elusive.

Time comes in waves here, a...Read more of this...

Restless Leg Syndrome

by Edward Taylor
 After the burial 
we returned to our units 
and assumed our poses. 
Our posture was the new posture 
and not the old sick posture. 
When we left our stations 
it was just to prove we could, 
not a serious departure 
or a search for yet another beginning. 
We were done with all that.
We were settled in, as they say,...Read more of this...

One Viceroy Resigns

by Rudyard Kipling
 So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too,
And almost thinks himself the Government.)
O Youth, Youth, Youth! Forgive me, you're so young.
Forty from sixty -- twenty years of work
And power to back the working. Ay def mi!
You...Read more of this...

A Boy Named Sue

by Shel Silverstein
 Well, my daddy left home when I was three,
and he didn't leave much to Ma and me,
just this old guitar and a bottle of booze.
Now I don't blame him because he run and hid,
but the meanest thing that he ever did was
before he left he went and named me Sue.

Well, he must have thought it was quite a joke,
and...Read more of this...

In The Poppy Field

by James Stephens
 Mad Patsy said, he said to me,
That every morning he could see
An angel walking on the sky;
Across the sunny skies of morn
He threw great handfuls far and nigh
Of poppy seed among the corn;
And then, he said, the angels run
To see the poppies in the sun.

A poppy is a devil weed,
I said to him - he disagreed;
He said the devil...Read more of this...

Theme with Variations

by Lewis Carroll
 I never loved a dear Gazelle-- 
Nor anything that cost me much: 
High prices profit those who sell, 
But why should I be fond of such? 
To glad me with his soft black eye 
My son comes trotting home from school; 
He's had a fight but can't tell why-- 
He always was a little fool! 

But, when he came...Read more of this...

The Rear-Guard

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Groping along the tunnel, step by step, 
He winked his prying torch with patching glare 
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know, 
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; 
And he, exploring fifty feet below 
The rosy gloom of battle overhead. 
Tripping, he grapped the wall; saw someone lie...Read more of this...

Gangrene

by Philip Levine
 Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses 
calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs. 

Zola, J'accuse


One was kicked in the stomach 
until he vomited, then 
 made to put back 
into his mouth what they had 
brought forth; when he tried to drown 
 in his own stew 
he was recovered. "You are 
worse than a ****** or Jew,"...Read more of this...

Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; II: On Malicious Cruelty To Harmless Creatures

by Ellis Parker Butler
 The cruelty of P. L. Brown—
(He had ten toes as good as mine)
Was known to every one in town,
And, if he never harmed a noun,
He loved to make verbs shriek and whine.

The “To be” family’s just complaints—
(Brown had ten toes as good as mine)
Made Brown cast off the last restraints:
He smashed the “Is nots” into “Ain’ts”
And kicked both mood...Read more of this...

A Ramble in St. Jamess Park

by John Wilmot
 Much wine had passed, with grave discourse
Of who fucks who, and who does worse
(Such as you usually do hear
From those that diet at the Bear),
When I, who still take care to see
Drunkenness relieved by lechery,
Went out into St. James's Park
To cool my head and fire my heart.
But though St. James has th' honor on 't,
'Tis consecrate to prick and...Read more of this...

Melancholia

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 the history of melancholia
includes all of us. 
me, I writhe in dirty sheets
while staring at blue walls
and nothing. 
I have gotten so used to melancholia
that 
I greet it like an old 
friend. 
I will now do 15 minutes of grieving
for the lost redhead,
I tell the gods. 
I do it and feel quite bad
quite sad,
then I rise
CLEANSED
even though nothing 
is...Read more of this...

The Cuckoo

by Robert William Service
 No lyric line I ever penned
The praise this parasitic bird;
And what is more, I don't intend
To write a laudatory word,
Since in my garden robins made
A nest with eggs of dainty spot,
And then a callous cuckoo laid
 A lone on on the lot.

Of course the sillies hatched it out
Along with their two tiny chicks,
And there it threw its weight about,
But...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Blasphemous Bill

by Robert William Service
 I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die--
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by...Read more of this...

The Fear

by Robert Frost
 A lantern light from deeper in the barn
Shone on a man and woman in the door
And threw their lurching shadows on a house
Near by, all dark in every glossy window.
A horse's hoof pawed once the hollow floor,
And the back of the gig they stood beside
Moved in a little. The man grasped a wheel,
The woman spoke out sharply, "Whoa, stand...Read more of this...

Marksman Sam

by Marriott Edgar
 When Sam Small joined the regiment,
'E were no' but a raw recruit,
And they marched 'im away one wint'ry day,
'Is musket course to shoot.

They woke 'im up at the crack o' dawn,
Wi' many a nudge and shake,
'E were dreaming that t' Sergeant 'ad broke 'is neck,
And 'e didn't want to wake.

Lieutenant Bird came on parade,
And chided the lads for mooning,
'E...Read more of this...

Dumb Swede

by Robert William Service
 With barbwire hooch they filled him full,
Till he was drunker than all hell,
And then they peddled him the bull
About a claim they had to sell.
A thousand bucks they made him pay,
Knowing that he had nothing more,
And when he begged it back next day,
And wept! - they kicked him from the door.

They reckoned they were mighty slick,
Them two tinhorns from...Read more of this...

The Lion For Real

by Allen Ginsberg
 "Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..."


I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a...Read more of this...

Willie Metcalf

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was Willie Metcalf.
They used to call me "Doctor Meyers"
Because, they said, I looked like him.
And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
I lived in the livery stable,
Sleeping on the floor
Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog,
Or sometimes in a stall.
I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
Without getting kicked -- we knew each other.
On spring...Read more of this...

A Satyre Against Mankind

by John Wilmot
 Were I - who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man -
A spirit free to choose for my own share
What sort of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.

His senses are too gross; and he'll contrive
A...Read more of this...

Grown Up

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
I should retire at half-past eight?...Read more of this...

The Visitor

by Jack Prelutsky
 it came today to visit
and moved into the house
it was smaller than an elephant
but larger than a mouse

first it slapped my sister
then it kicked my dad
then it pushed my mother
oh! that really made me mad

it went and tickled rover
and terrified the cat
it sliced apart my necktie
and rudely crushed my hat

it smeared my head with honey
and filled the tub with...Read more of this...

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