Famous Latrine Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Angels Of The Love Affair

...LS

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that festering hole."
Then he bit me in the buttocks and took over my soul.
Fire woman, you of the ancient flame, you
of the Bunsen burner, you of the candle,
you of the blast furnace, you of the barbecue,
you of the fierce solar energy, Mademoiselle,
take some i...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne


As It Was Written

...nd
toward extinction,
right to the roots,
thickening the oceans like gravy,
festering in your caves,
you are becoming a latrine.
Your trees are twisted chairs.
Your flowers moan at their mirrors,
and cry for a sun that doesn't wear a mask.

Your clouds wear white,
trying to become nuns
and say novenas to the sky.
The sky is yellow with its jaundice,
and its veins spill into the rivers
where the fish kneel down
to swallow hair and goat's eyes.

All in all, I'd say,
the world i...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

At the Top of My voice

...e enemy of raw water.

Professor,
 take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
 those times
 and myself.

I, a latrine cleaner
 and water carrier,
by the revolution
 mobilized and drafted,
went off to the front
 from the aristocratic gardens 
of poetry - 
 the capricious wench
She planted a delicious garden,
the daughter,
 cottage,
 pond
 and meadow.

Myself a garden I did plant,
myself with water sprinkled it.
some pour their verse from water cans;
others spit water...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir

Rune of the Finland Woman

...eet of a dying man.

She could drink the stone soup from a doubtful well.
She could breathe the green stink of a trench latrine.
She could drink a queen's share of important wine.
She could think a few things she would never tell.

She could learn the hand code of the deaf and blind.
She could earn the iron keys of the frozen queen.
She could wander uphill with a drunken friend.
She could bind the world's winds in a single strand....Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

...y,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.

The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.


But though lean Hun...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


The Distant Winter

...ftaid 
Even to aim at what I cannot see. 
This was his voice, or was it mine I heard? 

How do I know that in this foul latrine 
I calmed a soldier, infantile, manic? 
Could he be real with such eyes pinched between 
The immense floating shoulders of his tunic? 

IV 

Around the table where the map is spread 
The officers gather. Now the colonel leans 
Into the blinkered light from overhead 
And with a penknife improvises plans 

For our departure. Plans delivered by 
An old ...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

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