Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Kicking Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Silverstein, Shel
...ece of my ear. But I busted a chair
right across his teeth. And we crashed through
the wall and into the street kicking and a-gouging
in the mud and the blood and the beer.

I tell you I've fought tougher men but I really can't remember when.
He kicked like a mule and bit like a crocodile.
I heard him laughin' and then I heard him cussin',
he went for his gun and I pulled mine first.
He stood there looking at me and I saw him smile.

And he said, "...Read more of this...



by Kizer, Carolyn
...ausalito's bay.

In San Francisco we'd perch on a waterfront pier
chewing sourdough and cheese, swilling champagne,
kicking our heels;
crooning lewd songs, hooting like seagulls,
we bayed with the seals.

Then you married someone in Mexico,
broke up in two weeks, didn't bother to divorce,
claimed it didn't count.
You dumped number three, fled to Albany
to become a pedant.

Averse to domesticity, you read for your Ph.D.
Your four-year-old looked like a ...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...ins you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.<...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...that isn't all.
Some ghosts are children.
Not angels, but ghosts;
curling like pink tea cups
on any pillow, or kicking,
showing their innocent bottoms, wailing
for Lucifer....Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...leant back and went fast asleep. 

He dreamt he were playing at Wembley 
And t’roar of a thundering cheer 
He were kicking a goal for the Whippets 
When he woke with a clout in his ear! 

He found 'twere the ball that had struck him 
And inside the net there it lay 
But as no one had seen this ‘ere ‘appen 
He punted it back into play! 

'Twere the first ball he’d punted in anger 
His feelings he couldn’t restrain 
Forgetting as he were goalkeeper 
He ran out and kicked i...Read more of this...



by Bukowski, Charles
...s and swinging her ankles
like she did,
2 more stops. . .
the truck stalled at a traffic light, it was hell
kicking it over
again. . .
I had to be home by 8,8 was the deadline for Miriam.
I made the last pickup and the truck stalled at a signal
1/2 block from the station. . .
it wouldn't start, it couldn't start. . .
I locked the doors, pulled the key and ran down to the 
station. . .
I threw the keys down. ....Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...came to a tavern with 
 vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for 
 pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no imformation, and so
 we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
 too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
 satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I 
 remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, 
 ...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
....
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear --
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and white, a panic,
You have stuck her kittens outside your window
In a sort of cement well
Where they crap and puke and cry and she can't hear.
You say you can't stand her,
The bastard's a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio
Clear of voices and history, the staticky
N...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ntinual rolling of wheels.
An officer gallops up with his sabre clicking; a mameluke gallops 
down
with his charger kicking. `Valets de pied' run about 
in ones, and twos,
and groups, like swirled blown leaves. Tramp! Tramp! The 
guard is changing,
and the grenadiers off duty lounge out of sight, ranging along the 
roads
toward Paris.
The slate roof sparkles in the sun, but it sparkles 
milkily, vaguely,
the great glass-houses put out its shining. Glass, s...Read more of this...

by Bogan, Louise
...call you at all.
Nevertheless, nevertheless
You steamed to me over the sea,
Fat and red, a placenta

Paralyzing the kicking lovers.
Cobra light
Squeezing the breath from the blood bells
Of the fuchsia. I could draw no breath,
Dead and moneyless,

Overexposed, like an X-ray.
Who do you think you are?
A Communion wafer? Blubbery Mary?
I shall take no bite of your body,
Bottle in which I live,

Ghastly Vatican.
I am sick to death of hot salt.
Green as eun...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...
I do it and feel quite bad
quite sad,
then I rise
CLEANSED
even though nothing 
is solved. 
that's what I get for kicking 
religion in the ass. 
I should have kicked the redhead
in the ass
where her brains and her bread and
butter are
at ... 
but, no, I've felt sad
about everything:
the lost redhead was just another
smash in a lifelong
loss ... 
I listen to drums on the radio now
and grin.
there is something wrong with me
besides
melancho...Read more of this...

by Taylor, Edward
...nothing ever happened again?
Would there be enough to "eke out an existence,"
as they say? I wish "they" were here now, kicking
up a little dust, mussing my hair, taunting me
with weird syllogisms. Instead, these are the windless,
halcyon days. The lull dispassion is upon us.
Serenity has triumphed in its mindless, atrophied way.
A school of Stoics walks by, eager, in its phlegmatic way,
to observe human degradation, lust and debauchery
at close quarters. ...Read more of this...

by Tate, James
...otherwise. 
What a story!
After the burial we returned to our units 
and here is where I am experiencing 
that lag kicking syndrome thing. 
My leg, for no apparent reason,
flies around the room kicking stuff, 
well, whatever is in its way, 
like a screen or a watering can.
Those are just two examples
and indeed I could give many more.
I could construct a catalogue 
of the things it kicks, 
perhaps I will do that later.
We'll just have to see if it's reall...Read more of this...

by Kay, Jackie
...e woodworm
Outside the weeds grow tall

As she must be now

V
She, my little foreigner
No longer familiar with my womb

Kicking her language of living
Somewhere past stalking her first words

She is six years old today
I am twenty-five; we are only

That distance apart yet
Time has fossilised

Prehistoric time is easier
I can imagine dinosaurs

More vivid than my daughter
Dinosaurs do not hurt my eyes

Nor make me old so terribly old
We are land sliced and torn....Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...t's sting turning promptly 
into the shark's neat biting off 
of a leg because the soul 
wears a magnifying glass. 
Kicking the heart 
with pain's big boots running up and down 
the intestines like a motorcycle racer. 

Yet one does get out of bed 
and start over, plunge into the day 
and put on a hopeful look 
and does not allow fear to build a wall 
between you and an old friend 
or a new friend and reach out your hand, 
shutting down the thought that 
an axe may cu...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...enough.

Maybe I shouldn't have put it in words.
Frankly, I think I'm worse for this kissing,
drunk as a piper, kicking the traces
and determined to tie her up forever.
You see the song is the life,
the life I can't live.
God, even as he passes,
hand down monogamy like slang.
I wanted to write her into the law.
But, you know, there is no law for this.

Man of many hearts, you are a fool!
The clover has grown thorns this year
and robbed the cattle o...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...mother,
who disappeared last year,
flying somewhere with your strange wings,
your wide eyes, and your heavy wet dress,
kicking deeper down into a lake
with no end or name, some boundless province of water....Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...eir shoes worn down to a laugh,
never the bed falling down into purgatory
to let them climb in after
with their Lucifer kicking....Read more of this...

by Wright, James
...e mocking policeman
Or some cute young wiseacre
Smashing his dentures,
Perhaps leading him on
To a dark place and there
Kicking him in his dead groin
Just for the fun of it.

Young tree, unburdened
By anything but your beautiful natural blossoms
And dew, the dark
Blood in my body drags me
Down with my brother....Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...lves,
All the volte face of decimals,
The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.

Turn him on his back,
The kicking little beetle,
And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,
The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal cross
And on either side count five,
On each side, two above, on each side, two below
The dark bar horizontal.

The Cross!
It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,
Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,
Through ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Kicking poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things