Famous My Bad Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Like a bad suitor desperate and trembling

by Fernando Pessoa
Like a bad suitor desperate and trembling

From the mixed sense of being not loved and loving,

Who with feared longing half would know, dissembling

With what he'd wish proved what he fears soon proving,

I look with inner eyes afraid to look,

Yet perplexed into looking, at the worth

This verse may have and wonder, of my book,

To what thoughts shall't in alien hearts give...Read more of this...

Bad Day At The Beauty Salon

by Maggie Estep
 I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with
dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull. I needed a job, but first,
I needed a haircut.

So I head for this beauty salon on Avenue B.
I'm gonna get a hairdo.
I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown
and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted ***** red and...Read more of this...

To A Poet Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets Imitators Of His And Mine

by William Butler Yeats
 You say, as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another's said or sung,
'Twere politic to do the like by these;
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?...Read more of this...

A Bad Half Hour

by Badger Clark
  Wonder why I feel so restless;
    Moon is shinin' still and bright,
  Cattle all is restin' easy,
    But I just kaint sleep tonight.
  Ain't no cactus in my blankets,
    Don't know why they feel so hard--
  'Less it's Warblin' Jim a-singin'
    "Annie Laurie"...Read more of this...

The Bad Monk

by Charles Baudelaire
 On the great walls of ancient cloisters were nailed
Murals displaying Truth the saint,
Whose effect, reheating the pious entrails
Brought to an austere chill a warming paint.

In the times when Christ was seeded around,
More than one illustrious monk, today unknown
Took for a studio the funeral grounds
And glorified Death as the one way shown.

—My soul is a tomb, an empty confine
Since eternity...Read more of this...

Phantasmagoria Canto I (The Trystyng )

by Lewis Carroll
 ONE winter night, at half-past nine,
Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy,
I had come home, too late to dine,
And supper, with cigars and wine,
Was waiting in the study. 

There was a strangeness in the room,
And Something white and wavy
Was standing near me in the gloom -
I took it for the carpet-broom
Left by that careless slavey. 

But presently the Thing began
To...Read more of this...

Large Bad Picture

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or
some northerly harbor of Labrador,
before he became a schoolteacher
a great-uncle painted a big picture.

Receding for miles on either side
into a flushed, still sky
are overhanging pale blue cliffs
hundreds of feet high,

their bases fretted by little arches,
the entrances to caves
running in along the level of a bay
masked by perfect waves.

On the middle of that quiet...Read more of this...

Mulligans Mare

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh, Mulligan's bar was the deuce of a place 
To drink, and to fight, and to gamble and race; 
The height of choice spirits from near and from far 
Were all concentrated on Mulligan's bar. 

There was "Jerry the Swell", and the jockey-boy Ned, 
"Dog-bite-me" -- so called from the shape of his head -- 
And a man whom...Read more of this...

bad for ears

by Rg Gregory
 the song wasn't up to the task
of getting through the double-glazing
into the ears pressed on the outside pane
the rest of their bodies had faded away but
the ears were straining still towards the music
in order to know the good times being had in the room
night fell the cold grew and the lights went out but
the ears hung around believing in...Read more of this...

You Take My Hand

by Margaret Atwood
 You take my hand and
I'm suddenly in a bad movie,
it goes on and on and 
why am I fascinated

We waltz in slow motion
through an air stale with aphrodisms
we meet behind the endless ptted palms
you climb through the wrong windows

Other people are leaving
but I always stay till the end
I paid my money, I
want to see what happens.

In chance bathtubs I...Read more of this...

The Power of the Dog

by Rudyard Kipling
 There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie --
Perfect passion and worship fed
By...Read more of this...

Wise Men In Their Bad Hours

by Robinson Jeffers
 Wise men in their bad hours have envied 
The little people making merry like grasshoppers 
In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking 
Backward but never forward, and if they somehow 
Take hold upon the future they do it 
Half asleep, with the tools of generation 
Foolishly reduplicating 
Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too, 
Groan against labors, wars...Read more of this...

The Children of the Night

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 For those that never know the light, 
The darkness is a sullen thing; 
And they, the Children of the Night, 
Seem lost in Fortune's winnowing. 

But some are strong and some are weak, -- 
And there's the story. House and home 
Are shut from countless hearts that seek 
World-refuge that will never come. 

And if there be no other...Read more of this...

Further Instructions

by Ezra Pound
 Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions.
Let us express our envy for the man with a steady job and no worry about the future. 
You are very idle, my songs, 
I fear you will come to a bad end. 
You stand about the streets, You loiter at the corners and bus-stops,
You do next to nothing at all....Read more of this...

As a bad orator, badly o'er-book-skilled,

by Fernando Pessoa
As a bad orator, badly o'er-book-skilled,

Doth overflow his purpose with made heat,

And, like a clock, winds with withoutness willed

What should have been an inner instinct's feat;

Or as a prose-wit, harshly poet turned,

Lacking the subtler music in his measure,

With useless care labours but to be spurned,

Courting in alien speech the Muse's pleasure;

I study how to love or how to hate,

Estranged by...Read more of this...

Lost

by Robert William Service
 "Black is the sky, but the land is white--
 (O the wind, the snow and the storm!)--
 Father, where is our boy to-night?
 Pray to God he is safe and warm."

 "Mother, mother, why should you fear?
 Safe is he, and the Arctic moon
 Over his cabin shines so clear--
 Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."

"It's getting dark...Read more of this...

A Green Crabs Shell

by Mark Doty
 Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like--

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
--size of a demitasse--
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded...Read more of this...

Depressed By A Book Of Bad Poetry I Walk Toward An Unused Pasture And Invite The Insects To Join Me

by James Wright
 Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are...Read more of this...

I can but vaguely tell my secret to the bad or to the

by Omar Khayyam
I can but vaguely tell my secret to the bad or to the
good. I cannot elaborate or explain my thought, which
is essentially brief. I see a place of which I can only
trace a description; I possess a secret which I cannot unveil.
287...Read more of this...

Khayyam! why weep you that your life is bad?

by Omar Khayyam
Khayyam! why weep you that your life is bad?
What boots it thus to mourn? Rather be glad.
He that sins not can make no claim to mercy,
Mercy was made for sinners—be not sad....Read more of this...

Clouds

by Philip Levine
 1 

Dawn. First light tearing 
at the rough tongues of the zinnias, 
at the leaves of the just born. 

Today it will rain. On the road 
black cars are abandoned, but the clouds 
ride above, their wisdom intact. 

They are predictions. They never matter. 
The jet fighters lift above the flat roofs, 
black arrowheads trailing their future. 

2 

When...Read more of this...

Oh! Mr Best Youre Very Bad

by Jane Austen
 Oh! Mr. Best, you're very bad
And all the world shall know it;
Your base behaviour shall be sung
By me, a tunefull Poet.-- 
You used to go to Harrowgate
Each summer as it came,
And why I pray should you refuse
To go this year the same?-- 

The way's as plain, the road's as smooth,
The Posting not increased;
You're scarcely stouter than you were,
Not younger...Read more of this...

Prayer In Bad Weather

by Charles Bukowski
 by God, I don't know what to
do.
they're so nice to have around.
they have a way of playing with
the balls
and looking at the cock very
seriously
turning it
tweeking it
examining each part
as their long hair falls on
your belly.
it's not the fucking and sucking
alone that reaches into a man
and softens him, it's the extras,
it's all the extras.
now it's raining tonight
and there's nobody
they are elsewhere
examining...Read more of this...

The Bad Season Makes The Poet Sad

by Robert Herrick
 Dull to myself, and almost dead to these,
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;
Lost to all music now, since every thing
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.
Sick is the land to th' heart; and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desperate cure.
But if that golden age would come again,
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;
If smooth and unperplex'd...Read more of this...

Good and Bad Children

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Children, you are very little, 
And your bones are very brittle; 
If you would grow great and stately, 
You must try to walk sedately. 

You must still be bright and quiet, 
And content with simple diet; 
And remain, through all bewild'ring, 
Innocent and honest children. 

Happy hearts and happy faces, 
Happy play in grassy places-- 
That was how in...Read more of this...

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