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Famous Lipstick Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...th paper? 

Not there. 

I open my pocketbook, 
as women do, 
and fish swim back and forth 
between the dollars and the lipstick. 
I pick them out, 
one by one 
and throw them at the street signs, 
and shoot my pocketbook 
into the Charles River. 
Next I pull the dream off 
and slam into the cement wall 
of the clumsy calendar 
I live in, 
my life, 
and its hauled up 
notebooks....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne



...treats; always

She wore black from toe to top and especially

Underneath, her hair dyed black, stuck up in a

Bun, her lipstick caked and smeared, drawling

From the corner of her mouth like a

Thirties gangsters’ moll, her true ambition.

"Kill him, kill him, the bastard!" she’d scream

As all Wakefield watched, "It’s Grotty,

Grotty’s at it again!" as pubs and clubs

Banned them, singly or together and they

Moved lodgings yet again, landlords and

Landladies left reeling ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...When she goes to Hollywood
she is an angel.

She writes in red red lipstick
on the window of her body,
long for me, oh need me!
Parts her lips like a lotus.

Opening night she stands, poised
on her carpet, luminescent,
young men humming
all around her. She is flying.
Her high heels are wands, her
furs electric. Her bracelets
flashing. How completely
dazzling her complexion,
how vibrant her hair and eyes,
how brilliant the g...Read more of this...
by Grahn, Judy
...Pale scrapings of people 
with lipstick ringed glasses 
and cigarettes burning, 
and laughter trickling up and down 
their knotty throats. 
What is this, 
a gathering of henhouse critics? 

My father's voice in the back of my head, 
saying, forget that I'm dead and if you 
can not do that than pretend. 

I am standing 
just outside the gallery 
beneath the shadowy bough of a birch. 
The m...Read more of this...
by Zaran, Lisa
...wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break....Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard



...e a bat at the World's Fair.

 There was a girl there in her early teens or maybe she

was only ten years old. She wore lipstick and had a loud

voice and seemed to be aware of boys. She got a lot of fun

out of sweeping the front porch of the restaurant.

 She came in and played around with the baby. She was

very good with the baby. Her voice dropped down and got

soft with the baby. She told us that her father'd had a heart

attack and was still in bed. "He can't get up an...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard
...oquent prose and poetry sublime

His elegy on David Gascoyne’s death quite takes my breath

And the title of his novel ‘Lipstick Boys’ I'll envy always,



There are some few I talk and write to

And occasionally meet. David Lambert, poet and teacher

Of creative writing, doing it ‘my way’ in the nineties,

UEA found his services superfluous to their needs.



? ? you may **** like hell,

But I abhor your jealous narcissistic smell

And as for your much vaunted pc prose

I’d ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...
She suddenly brushes sleep from her hair.

I have been dead for hours. The brunette
witness to nothing studies her new lipstick
smeared on a gray napkin.

The fires of a cremation tank are rising...
she descends into Seattle
nervous over the blinking city lights

that are climbing to meet her flight.
The old man seated next to her closes his book.
He has recognized her.

And leans into the window
to whisper, nothing happens. Nothing
ever happens....Read more of this...
by Dubie, Norman
...They grow tall as a lancer
And ask questions you can't answer,

And supply you with data
About how everybody else wears lipstick sooner and stays up later,

And if they are popular,
The phone they monopular.

They scorn the dominion
Of their parent's opinion,

They're no longer corralable
Once they find that you're fallible

But after you've raised them and educated them and gowned them,
They just take their little fingers and wrap you around them.

Being a father Is quite a ...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...rd more muted shades."

She paused and had the grace
to drop her eyes.She did look ravishing,
spookily insubstantial, a lipstick ghost on tissue,
or as if one stood on a fifth-floor terrace

peering through a fringe of rain at Paris'
dreaming chimney pots, each sooty issue
wobbling skyward in an ecstatic oracular spiral.

"And he never thinks of food.I wish
I didn't have to plead with him to eat. . . ."Fruit
and cheese appeared, arrayed on leaf-green dishes.

I stuck with caf...Read more of this...
by Dove, Rita
...He tells you when you've got on
too much lipstick
And helps you with your girdle
when your hips stick....Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...gger than a barn, the boys would say;
Always the first to help the weak, and so with words of woe,
She put me wise that Lipstick Lou was in the family way:
"An' who ze baby's fazzaire ees, only ze bon Dieu know."
Then on a black and bitter night passed on poor Lipstick Lou;
And by her bedside, midwife wise, wi' tears aflowin' free,
A holdin' out the newly born,--an' by gosh! there was two:
"Helas! I am zere mossaire now," said Montreal Maree.

Said One-eyed Mike: "In Lucky St...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...he lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that. I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic. Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago. It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless. So ...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...e
Her waltzing I found was divine;
And she took those damn specs from her eyes,
And behold they were jewels a-shine;
No lipstick nor rouge she had on,
But no powder or paint could enhance
On her cheeks the twin roses shone
As I had with her dance after dance.

Then all of a sudden I knew
As we waltzed and reversed round the hall
That all eyes were watching us two,
And that she was the Belle of the Ball.
The fellows came buzzing like bees,
With swagger and posture and prance,
...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...do,
And when you perform some simple common or garden rite like putting
cold cream on your face or applying a touch of lipstick they seem to
think that you are up to some kind of black magic like a priestess of Voodoo.
And they are brave and calm and cool and collected about the ailments
of the person they have promised to honor and cherish,
But the minute they get a sniffle or a stomachache of their own, why
you'd think they were about to perish,
And when you are alone with...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...in college. 
She wriggled through bars like a satin eel, 
her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed 
in the dark red lipstick of desire. 

She visited in '68 still wearing skirts 
tight to the knees, dark red lipstick, 
while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt, 
lipstick pale as apricot milk, 
hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear, 
I thought in my superiority of the moment, 
whatever has happened to poor Cecile? 
She was out of fashion, out of the game, 
disqualifie...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things