Famous Ripping Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Study Of Reading Habits

...ht hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my coat and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap....Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip


Crossing The Atlantic

...were happening.
Generation after generation,
I go her way.
She will run East, knot by knot, over an old bloodstream,
stripping it clear,
each hour ripping it, pounding, pounding,
forcing through as through a virgin.
Oh she is so quick!
This dead street never stops!...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Emptying Town

...oard door, Jesus tucked 

into the mirror. He wants to save me
but we disagree from what. My version of hell
is someone ripping open his shirt 

and saying, Look what I did for you. . ....Read more of this...
by Flynn, Nick

Here I Am ..

...ghtingale to watch the
Johnny Carson show with 
if I have a stroke I will lay here for six
days, my three cats hungrily ripping the flesh
from my elbows, wrists, head 
the radio playing classical music ... 
I promised myself never to write old man poems
but this one's funny, you see, excusable, be-
cause I've long gone past using myself and there's
still more left
here at 3 a.m. I am going to take this sheet from
the typer
pour another glass and
insert
make love to the fresh ...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

Manitoba Childe Roland

...LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf
song under the eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe
Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not
understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and nothing ...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl


On The Boulevard

...tch a brandy quick . . .
There! I'm feeling better now.
Let's collaborate, we two,
You the Mummer, I the Bard;
Oh, what ripping stuff we'll do,
Sitting on the Boulevard!...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Self-Portrait At 28

...ones
leaving everyone feeling quite nervous
and split in two.

We will travel to Mars
even as folks on Earth
are still ripping open potato chip
bags with their teeth.

Why? I don't have the time or intelligence
to make all the connections
like my friend Gordon
(this is a true story)
who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts
and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree
until I brought it up.
He'd never broken the name down to its parts.
By then it was too late.
He had moved ...Read more of this...
by Berman, David

Shirt

...over for sun and rain,
my shirt is a signal,
and a teller of souls.

I can take off my shirt and tear it,
and so make a ripping razzly noise,
and the people will say,
“Look at him tear his shirt.”

I can keep my shirt on.
I can stick around and sing like a little bird
and look’em all in the eye and never be fazed.
 I can keep my shirt on....Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Sorry I Missed You

...affect which almost became a convulsion until finally

He shrieked, “I have to go, the cat’s under the Christmas tree, ripping

Open all the presents, the central heating boiler’s on the blink,

The house is on fucking fire!”



So I was left with the offer of being raffle-ticket tout as a special favour,

Some recompense for giving over two entire newsletters to Jimmy’s work:

The words of the letter before his stroke still burned. “I don’t know why

They omitted me, Armita...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

...Major Brown,
A Sourdough is a guy who drinks ... an ice-worm cocktail down."

"By Gad!" responded Major Brown, "that's ripping, don't you know.
I've always felt I'd like to be a certified Sourdough.
And though I haven't any doubt your Winter's awf'ly nice,
Mayfair, I fear, may miss me ere the break-up of your ice.
Yet (pray excuse my ignorance of matters such as these)
A cocktail I can understand - but what's an ice-worm, please?"
Said Deacon White: "It is not strange that y...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)

...and passes, starring the window-pane.
Once, long ago, one night,
She saw the lightning, with long blue quiver of light,
Ripping the darkness . . . and as she turned in terror
A soft face leaned above her, leaned softly down,
Softly around her a breath of roses was blown,
She sank in waves of quiet, she seemed to float
In a sea of silence . . . and soft steps grew remote . .

'Well, let us walk in the park . . . The sun is warm,
We'll sit on a bench and talk . . .' They turn a...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 07: Two Lovers: Overtones

...and passes, starring the window-pane.
Once, long ago, one night,
She saw the lightning, with long blue quiver of light,
Ripping the darkness . . . and as she turned in terror
A soft face leaned above her, leaned softly down,
Softly around her a breath of roses was blown,
She sank in waves of quiet, she seemed to float
In a sea of silence . . . and soft steps grew remote . .

'Well, let us walk in the park . . . The sun is warm,
We'll sit on a bench and talk . . .' They turn a...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The Law Of The Yukon

...hing my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,
Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;
Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,
Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.
I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;
Vis...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Santa-Fe Trail (A Humoresque)

...ing Kansas plain—
While I sit by the milestone
And watch the sky,
The United States
Goes by.

Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking. 
Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking.
Way down the road, trilling like a toad,
Here comes the dice -horn, here comes the vice -horn,
Here comes the snarl -horn, brawl -horn, lewd -horn,
Followed by the prude -horn, bleak and squeaking: —
(Some of them from Kansas, some of themn from Kansas.)
Here comes the hod -horn, plod -horn, s...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

The Vision of Judgment

...ce? In faith, not I. 
Besides, I beat him hollow at the last, 
With all his Lords and Commons: in the sky 
I don't like ripping up old stories, since 
His conduct was but natural in a prince. 

LXXI 

'Foolish, no doubt, and wicked, to oppress 
A poor unlucky devil without a shilling; 
But then I blame the man himself much less 
Than Bute and Grafton, and shall be unwilling 
To see him punish'd here for their excess, 
Since they were both damn'd long ago, and still in 
Their ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

To All and Everything

...e bedstand’s palm.”

Love!
You only existed in my inflamed brain.
Enough!
Stop this foolish comedy
and take notice:
I’m ripping off
my toy armour,
I,
the greatest of all Don Quixotes!

Remember?
Weighed down by the cross,
Christ stopped for a moment,
weary.
Watching him, the mob
yelled, jeering:
“Get movin’, you clod!”

That’s right!
Be spiteful.
Spit upon him who begs for a rest
on his day of days,
harry and curse him.
To the army of zealots, doomed to do good,
man shows no ...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir

U R Ripping Us Apart!

...ver broke
we were bonded and melded as one
but as the 2 pushed u away
the one got weak and embraced u
and now u are ripping us apart..

The worst feeling of helplessness
the greatest pain has rested in my heart
the vision of heaven fades
and the nightmare of loneliness has started..

My hero has been defeated by u
and now what can i do
watch as u destroy us
and our love is finally through

I know worst is here
I feel it in my heart
u got into the circle
now...Read more of this...
by Shakur, Tupac

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