Famous Nightmares Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Nightmares poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous nightmares poems. These examples illustrate what a famous nightmares poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Barry Tebb
It is time after thirty years
We had our Poetry Renaissance
Rise, Children of Albion, rise!
It is time after nightmares of sleep
When we walked the streets of inner cities
Our poems among the burnt-out houses
And cars, whispering compassion
To the addicts shaking and the homeless
Waking and those who have come apart
In the nowhere of today
Begging in stations
Sleeping in boxes.
It is time to find
Our...Read more of this...
by
Wendell Berry
I
He wakes in darkness. All around
are sounds of stones shifting, locks
unlocking. As if some one had lifted
away a great weight, light
falls on him. He has been asleep or simply
gone. He has known a long suffering
of himself, himself sharpen by the pain
of his wound of separation he now
no longer minds, for the pain is only himself
now, grown small, become a...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
At once whatever happened starts receding.
Panting, and back on board, we line the rail
With trousers ripped, light wallets, and lips bleeding.
Yes, gone, thank God! Remembering each detail
We toss for half the night, but find next day
All's kodak-distant. Easily, then (though pale),
'Perspective brings significance,' we say,
Unhooding our photometers, and, snap!
What can't be printed can be thrown away.
Later, it's just a...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Because back home in Tennessee
I was a champeen shot,
They made a sniper outa me
An' ninety krouts I got:
I wish to Christ I'd not!
Athinkin' o' them blasted lives
It's kindo' blue I be;
Them lads no doubt had kids an' wives
An' happy home like me:
Them stiffs I still can see.
Aye, ninety men or more my hand
...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Chatterton
O SING unto my roundelay,
O drop the briny tear with me;
Dance no more at holyday,
Like a running river be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Black his cryne as the winter night,
White his rode as the summer snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cold he...Read more of this...
by
Audre Lorde
An upright abutment in the mouth
of the Willis Avenue bridge
a beige Honda leaps the divider
like a steel gazelle inescapable
sleek leather boots on the pavement
rat-a-tat-tat best intentions
going down for the third time
stuck in the particular
You cannot make love to concrete
if you care about being
non-essential wrong or worn thin
if you fear ever becoming
diamonds or lard
you cannot make love to concrete
if you...Read more of this...
by
Ruth Padel
I was with Special Force, blue-X-ing raids
to OK surfing on the Colonel's birthday.
Operation Ariel: we sprayed Jimi Hendrix
loud from helis to frighten the slopes
before 'palming. A turkey shoot.
*
The Nang fogged up. The men you need
are moral and kill like angels. Passionless.
No judgement. Judgement defeats us.
You're choosing between nightmares all the time.
My first tour, we hissed...Read more of this...
by
Tupac Shakur
Today is filled with anger
fueled with hidden hate
scared of being outcast
afraid of common fate
Today is built on tragedies
which no one wants 2 face
nightmares 2 humanities
and morally disgraced
Tonight is filled with rage
violence in the air
children bred with ruthlessness
because no one at home cares
Tonight I lay my head down
but the pressure never stops
knawing at my sanity
content when I am dropped
But 2morrow I...Read more of this...
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...
by
Robert William Service
I had a dream, a dream of dread:
I thought that horror held the house;
A burglar bent above my bed,
He moved as quiet as a mouse.
With hairy hand and naked knife
He poised to plunge a bloody stroke,
Until despairful of my life
I shrieked with terror - and awoke.
I had a dream of weary woes:
In weather that was fit to freeze,
I thought...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth
Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark
In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts
Besiege his fevered imagination – England’s
Imminent destruction, his own, the world’s…
Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,
Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol
Hold no sway on ward one, nor even...Read more of this...
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...
by
Rudyard Kipling
There's no sense in going further -- it's the edge of cultivation,"
So they said, and I believed it -- broke my land and sowed my crop --
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop.
Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable...Read more of this...
by
Gabbie Hanna
i’ve got a head full of nightmares,
a heart full of rage,
a belly full of liquor,
and a sink full of dishes.
i’ll start with the dishes....Read more of this...
by
David Berman
I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
For Leonard Baskin
To his house the bodiless
Come to barter endlessly
Vision, wisdom, for bodies
Palpable as his, and weighty.
Hands moving move priestlier
Than priest's hands, invoke no vain
Images of light and air
But sure stations in bronze, wood, stone.
Obdurate, in dense-grained wood,
A bald angel blocks and shapes
The flimsy light; arms folded
Watches his cumbrous world eclipse
Inane worlds of wind and cloud.
Bronze dead dominate the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
Love is universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.
Symptoms of true love
Are leanness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns;
Are omens and nightmares -
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign:
For a touch of her fingers
In a darkened room,
For a searching look.
Take courage, lover!
Could you endure such pain
At any hand but hers?...Read more of this...
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