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Famous Offensive Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Gregory, Rg
...darkness different from what’s taught)

mona lisa (amon-isis) – enigmatic smile and code
for male and female balance – offensive to the powers
that ran the bible their way (hoodwinked future ages)
turned the bright sun black to mask the path they strode
wrapped their ascetic bloodstreams in the holy pages
before which (even today) the congregation cowers

da vinci was an artist scientist (probably a necromancer)
had his own black sun – dabbled in the anti-matter
that officia...Read more of this...



by Levine, Philip
...me
as I wrote, and when the line
got too long she'd reach
one sudden black foreleg down
and paw at the moving hand,
the offensive one. The first
time she drew blood I learned
it was poetic to end
a line anywhere to keep her
quiet. After all, many morn-
ings she'd gotten to the chair
long before I was even up.
Those nights I couldn't sleep
she'd come and sit in my lap
to calm me. So I figured
I owed her the short cat line.
She's dead now almost nine years,
...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...rforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, 
While the attendant stands behind aside me, holding the tray and pail. 

I am faithful, I do not give out; 
The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, 
These and more I dress with impassive hand—(yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning
 flame.)

5
Thus in silence, in dreams’ projections, 
Returning, resuming, I thread my way...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...know of things mysterious,
Immortal, starry; such alone could thus
Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn'd in aught
Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught
A Paphian dove upon a message sent?
Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent,
Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen
Her naked limbs among the alders green;
And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace
Something more high perplexing in thy face!"

 Endymion look'd at her, and press'd her hand,
And said, "Art thou ...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...no time to take caps off)
hot steaming food and noses in the trough

i loved it deeply squashed in there with you
rough offensive banter bantered back
the smells of sweat and cargoes mixed with stew
and dumplings lamb chops roast beef - what the ****
these toughened men could outdo friar tuck
so ravenous their faith blown off the sea
that god lived in the stomach raucously

perhaps cramped into scotts i felt it most
that you belonged in a living sea of men
who shared the one ...Read more of this...



by Trumbull, John
...supreme in earthly station,
And mighty lord of this creation,
When once his corse is dead as herring,
Becomes the most offensive carrion,
And sooner breeds the plague, 'tis found,
Than all beasts rotting on the ground.
Yet with republics to dismay us,
You've call'd up Anarchy from chaos,
With all the followers of her school,
Uproar and Rage and wild Misrule:
For whom this rout of Whigs distracted,
And ravings dire of every crack'd head;
These new-cast legislative engines...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...newscast ...
Let's say we're at the front--
 for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
 we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
 but we'll still worry ourselves to death
 about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say, 
 before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outsi...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...gntly by the moon 
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs; 
In Sion also not unsung, where stood 
Her temple on th' offensive mountain, built 
By that uxorious king whose heart, though large, 
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell 
To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind, 
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured 
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate 
In amorous ditties all a summer's day, 
While smooth Adonis from his native rock 
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blo...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...o attract by more than attraction! 
How it is I know not—yet behold! the something which obeys none of the rest, 
It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magnetic it draws. 

17
O joy of suffering!
To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! 
To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! 
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! 
To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance!...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...the reason of my fear.

I answer "If that ruffian Jones
Should recognise me here,
He'd bellow out my name in tones
Offensive to the ear:
He chaffs me so on being stout
(A thing that always puts me out)."

Ah me! I see him on the cliff!
Farewell, farewell to hope,
If he should look this way, and if
He's got his telescope!
To whatsoever place I flee,
My odious rival follows me!

For every night, and everywhere,
I meet him out at dinner;
And when I've found some charmin...Read more of this...

by Owen, Wilfred
...Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murm...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...e my check book, my holographs,
my eight naked books,
and sign it Mary, Mary, Mary
full of grace?
I know my name is not offensive
but my feet hang in the noose.
I want to be white.
I want to be blue.
I want to be a bee digging into an onion heart,
as you did to me, dug and squatted
long after death and its fang.

Hail Mary, full of me,
Nibbling in the sitting room of my head.
Mary, Mary, virgin forever,
whore forever,
give me your name,
give me your mirror...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...dsom Colour place.
Now the Jonquille o'ercomes the feeble Brain;
We faint beneath the Aromatick Pain, {6}
Till some offensive Scent thy Pow'rs appease,
And Pleasure we resign for short, and nauseous Ease. 

In ev'ry One thou dost possess,
New are thy Motions, and thy Dress:
Now in some Grove a list'ning Friend
Thy false Suggestions must attend,
Thy whisper'd Griefs, thy fancy'd Sorrows hear,
Breath'd in a Sigh, and witness'd by a Tear; 
Whilst in the light, and vulgar...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...ed on.

If love of art, or love, gives you affront
that the grave I'm in 's graffitied then, maybe, 
erase the more offensive **** and ****
but leave, with the worn UNITED, one small v.

Victory? For vast, slow, coal-creating forces
that hew the body's seams to get the soul.
Will earth run out of her 'diurnal courses'
before repeating her creation of black coal?

If, having come this far, somebody reads
these verses, and he/she wants to understand,
face this grave...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...ealed from sight,
Against the court to show his spite;
Perhaps his Travels, part the third,
A lie at every second word,
Offensive to a loyal ear;
But not one sermon, you may swear."

"His friendships there, to few confined,
Were always of the middling kind:
No fools of rank, a mongrel breed,
Who fain would pass for lords indeed.
Where titles give no right or power,
And peerage is a withered flower,
He would have held it a disgrace
If such a wretch had known his face.<...Read more of this...

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