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Famous Screwed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...o’ their claes;
Ane curses feet that fyl’d his shins,
 Anither sighs an’ prays:
On this hand sits a chosen swatch,
 Wi’ screwed-up, grace-proud faces;
On that a set o’ chaps, at watch,
 Thrang winkin on the lasses
 To chairs that day.


O happy is that man, an’ blest!
 Nae wonder that it pride him!
Whase ain dear lass, that he likes best,
 Comes clinkin down beside him!
Wi’ arms repos’d on the chair back,
 He sweetly does compose him;
Which, by degrees, slips round her ne...Read more of this...



by Thomas, Edward
...es to say or ask a word, 
About the weather, next about the war.
Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, 
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
Once more.

The blizzard felled the elm whose crest
I sat in, by a woodpecker's round hole, 
The ploughman said. 'When will they take it away? '
'When the war's over.' So the talk began –
One minute and an interval of ten, 
A minute more and the same interval.
'Have you been out? ' 'No.' 'An...Read more of this...

by Berryman, John
...am a teenage cancer, with a plan.
I am the blackt-out man.
I am the woman powerful as a zoo.
I am two eyes screwed to my set, whose blind—

It is the Fourth of July.
Collect: while the dying man,
forgone by you creator, who forgives,
is gasping 'Thomas Jefferson still lives'
in vain, in vain, in vain.
I am Henry Pussy-cat! My whiskers fly....Read more of this...

by Berryman, John
...Acacia, burnt myrrh, velvet, pricky stings.
—I'm not so young but not so very old,
said screwed-up lovely 23.
A final sense of being right out in the cold,
unkissed.
(—My psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist.) Women get under 
 things.

All these old criminals sooner or later
have had it. I've been reading old journals.
Gottwald & Co., out of business now.
Thick chests quit. Double agent, Joe.
She ho...Read more of this...

by Berryman, John
...o this world:')
A Buddhist, doused in the street, serenely burned.
The Secretary of State for War,
winking it over, screwed a redhaired whore.
Monsignor Capovilla mourned. What a week.
A journalism doggy took a leak

against absconding coon ('but take one virtue,
without which a man can hardly hold his own')
the sun in the willow
shivers itself & shakes itself green-yellow
(Abba Pimen groaned, over the telephone,
when asked what that was:)

How feel a fellow t...Read more of this...



by Estep, Maggie
...**** ME
I'm all screwed up so
**** ME.

**** ME
and take out the garbage
feed the cat and **** ME
you can do it, I know you can.

**** ME
and theorize about
Sado Masochism's relationship
to classical philosophy
tell me how this stimulates
the fabric of most human relationships,
I love that kind of pointless intellectualism
so do it again and
**** ME.

Stop being...Read more of this...

by Williams, Hugo
...You paused for a moment and I heard you smoking
on the other end of the line.
I pictured your expression,
one eye screwed shut against the smoke
as you waited for my reaction.
I was waiting for it myself, a list of my own news
gone suddenly cold in my hand.
Supposing my wife found out, what would happen then?
Would I have to leave her and marry you now?
Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad,
starting again with someone new, finding a new place,
pretending the best was y...Read more of this...

by Bidart, Frank
...his own kids?

 I got in the truck, and started to drive
and saw a little girl--
who I picked up, hit on the head, and
screwed, and screwed, and screwed, and screwed, then

buried,
 in the garden of the motel ...

--You see, ever since I was a kid I wanted
to feel things make sense: I remember

looking out the window of my room back home,--
and being almost suffocated by the asphalt;
and grass; and trees; and glass;
just there, just there, doing nothing!
not sayi...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...drover's horse." 

Loitering there in an aimless way 
Somehow I noticed the poor old grey, 
Weary and battered and screwed, of course; 
Yet when I noticed the old grey horse, 
The rough bush saddle, and single rein 
Of the bridle laid on his tangled mane, 
Straighway the crowd and the auctioneer 
Seemed on a sudden to disappear, 
Melted away in a kind if haze -- 
For my heart went back to the droving days. 

Back to the road, and I crossed again 
Over the miles of th...Read more of this...

by Rosenberg, Isaac
...e ledge. 
Behind my ear 
I stuck one through, 
One blood red poppy 
I gave to you. 

The sandbags narrowed 
And screwed out our jest, 
And tore the poppy 
You had on your breast ... 
Down - a shell - O! Christ, 
I am choked ... safe ... dust blind, I 
See trench floor poppies 
Strewn. Smashed you lie....Read more of this...

by Burns, Robert
...st,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screwed the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.— 
Coffins stood round, like open presses,
That shawed the Dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantraip sleight
Each in its cauld hand held a light,
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchris...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...d he stayed; 
The flame and the face faded, and he slept. 
And they had buried her that afternoon, 
Under the tight-screwed lid of a long box, 
Under the earth, under the leaves and snow.


II

Look where she would, feed conscience how she might, 
There was but one way now for Damaris— 
One straight way that was hers, hers to defend, 
At hand, imperious. But the nearness of it, 
The flesh-bewildering simplicity,
And the plain strangeness of it, thrilled again 
Tha...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...my hair,
waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard,

for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart
and were screwed together. They will knit.
And the other corpse, the fractured heart,
I feed it piecemeal, little chalice. I'm good to it.

Yet lie a fire alarm it waits to be known.
It is wired. In it many colors are stored.
While my body's in prison, heart cells alone
have multiplied. My bones are merely bored

with all this waiting ...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Ted
...l in its case.
 And the owl in its feathers
 Like a doll in its lace. 

Freezing dusk has tightened
 Like a nut screwed tight
On the starry aeroplane
 Of the soaring night.
 But the trout is in its hole
 Like a chuckle in a sleeper.
 The hare strays down the highway
 Like a root going deeper.
 The snail is dry in the outhouse
 Like a seed in a sunflower.
 The owl is pale on the gatepost
 Like a clock on its tower. 

Moonlight freezes the shaggy wor...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...a sudden but delicate motion like a famous brain surgeon

removing a disordered portion of the imagination. Then he screwed the

lid tightly onto the top of the jar and gave it a good shake.

The first part of the ceremony was over.

Like the inspired priest of an exotic cult, he had performed the first part

of the ceremony well.

His mother came around the side of the house and said in a voice filled

with sand and string, "When are you going to do the dishe...Read more of this...

by Wilmot, John
...is rays outdone
By your bright eyes, they would supply the morn,
And make a day before the day be born."
With mouth screwed up, conceited winking eyes,
And breasts thrust forward, "Lord, sir!" she replies.
"It is your goodness, and not my deserts,
Which makes you show this learning, wit, and parts."
He, puzzled, butes his nail, both to display
The sparkling ring, and think what next to say,
And thus breaks forth afresh: "Madam, egad!
Your luck at cards last night ...Read more of this...

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