Famous Scrubbed Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Scrubbed poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous scrubbed poems. These examples illustrate what a famous scrubbed poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Tebb, Barry
...who
Did not insist the conditions
Of kissing be written in tablets
Of stone, that I be not affianced
Elsewhere, be scrubbed to the bone,
Certified free of STD, solvent and
Holding a current contract of
Employment.
60
Margaret, I realize you had only
Yourself to offer, not a career prospect,
Mortgage partnership or pre-nuptial
Agreement, just your ten-year old self
Wearing a washed-out flower-patterned
Frock, navy-blue knickers and black
Laceless runn...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...en was wartime brown and green, a
Brick boiler in a corner lit once a week
For washing and once for bathing with the
Scrubbed ribs of the bath top, pot sink and
Cooking with a Yorkist range blackleaded
Every day and blackberrying down Knostrop
With thorns pricking blood from our fingers
Like the wicked witch in the wood and jam
Jar fulls of frogspawn on the windowsills.
10
The Roundhouse at Holbeck
Housed the engines of Empire
Kirkstall Forge hammered out
Axl...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...
21
Wartime brown and green went out, along with
The Yorkist Range, the wire-mesh food safe
In the cellar, the scrubbed board bath lid
And marbled glass bowl over the light bulb
With its hidden hoard of dead flies and
Rusting three-tier chain.
22
We moved to the new estate, Airey semis
With their pebble-dash prefabricated slats,
Built-in kitchen units and made-to-measure gardens.
Every Saturday I went back to the streets,
Dinner at Auntie Nellie’...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...pipe of peace—the sceen? tepees,
wigwams, papooses, buffalo hides, a high fire—
with everyone,
even that abnormally scrubbed & powerful one,
shivering with power, held together with wires,
his worst enemy....Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...ood Friday—
so help me Jesus—then made funny too
the other, further one.
There must have been a bit. Sheets scrubbed away
soon all but three nails. Doctors in this city O
will not (his wife cried) come.
Perhaps he's for it. IF that Filipino doc
had diagnosed ah here in Washington
that ear-infection ha
he'd have been grounded, so in a hall for the ill
in Southern California, they opined.
The cabins at eight thou'
are pressurized, they swore, my ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...es.
Wartime brown and green went out, along with
The Yorkist Range, the wire-mesh food safe
In the cellar, the scrubbed board bath lid
And marbled glass bowl over the light bulb
With its hidden hoard of dead flies and
Rusting three-tier chain.
We moved to the new estate, Airey semis
With their pebble-dash prefabricated slats,
Built-in kitchen units and made-to-measure gardens.
Every Saturday I went back to the streets,
Dinner at Auntie Nellie’s, Yor...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...a girlfriend came in
built me a bed
scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor
scrubbed the walls
vacuumed
cleaned the toilet
the bathtub
scrubbed the bathroom floor
and cut my toenails and
my hair.
then
all on the same day
the plumber came and fixed the kitchen faucet
and the toilet
and the gas man fixed the heater
and the phone man fixed the phone.
noe I sit in all this perfection.
it...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...News of the Gold World of May in Holland Michigan:
"Wooden shoes will clatter again
on freshly scrubbed streets--"
The tulip will arise and reign again from awnings and
windows
of all colors and forms
its vine, verve and valentine curves
upon the city streets, the public grounds
and private lawns
(wherever it is conceivable
that a bulb might take root
and the two lips, softly curved, come up
possessed by the skilled love and will of a bal...Read more of this...
by
Duhamel, Denise
...r mother's red nail polish that had flaked off
when she'd patted her daughter to sleep the night before.
But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering
under the surface, like a tapeworm curled up and living
in her left cheek.
Doc the Dwarf was no dermatologist
and besides Snow doesn't get to meet him in this version
because the mint leaves the tall doctor puts over her face
only make matters worse. Snow and the Queen hope
against hope for chicken pox...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ssaged him even when he ate his meals.
She waked him from his beauty sleep with tender, lovin' care,
An' rubbed an' scrubbed assiduous, yet never sign of hair.
Well, naturally all the boys soon tumbled to the joke,
An' at the Wow-wow's Social 'twas Cold-deck Davis spoke:
"The little woman's working mighty hard on Chewed-ear's crown;
Let's give her for a three-fifth's share a hundred dollars down.
We stand to make five hundred clear -- boys, drink in whiskey strai...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ound its head,
Like butterflies of a monster size--then I knew it for the Dead.
Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as smooth as a shaven pate;
In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed like a dinner-plate.
It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and large it grew;
It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me through and through.
It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I could retreat,
With the witless roll of a sodden sou...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...
Make a merry masquerade.
We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.
So still it lay that every day
Crawled ...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...sing out lives with doubt,
leaving us separate now, fogy with rage.
But then I've told my readers what I think
and scrubbed out the remainder with my shrink,
have placed my bones in a jar as if possessed,
have pasted a black wing over my left breast,
have washed the white out of the moon at my sink,
have eaten The Cross, have digested its lore,
indeed, have loved that eggless man once more,
have placed my own head in the kettle because
in the end death won't settle for ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...own, or the great task
Of gathering petals which the high wind strews;
The polishing of floors, the pictured tiles
Well scrubbed, and oaken chairs most deftly oiled.
Such things were Christine's world, and his was she
Winter drew near, his sun was in her smiles.
Another Spring, and at his law he toiled,
Unspoken hope counselled a wise efficiency.
36
Max Breuck was honour's soul, he knew himself
The guardian of this girl; no more, no less.
As one in charge of ...Read more of this...
by
Parker, Dorothy
...There still are kindly things for me to know,
Who am afraid to dream, afraid to feel-
This little chair of scrubbed and sturdy deal,
This easy book, this fire, sedate and slow.
And I shall stay with them, nor cry the woe
Of wounds across my breast that do not heal;
Nor wish that Beauty drew a duller steel,
Since I am sworn to meet her as a foe.
It may be, when the devil's own time is done,
That I shall hear the dropping of the rain
At midnight, and lie q...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...uld have lined with a soft cloth
and placed on the kitchen table
so she could keep an eye on infant Katherine
while she scrubbed potatoes or shelled a bag of peas,
the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant
who just broke the glassy surface
and is moving away from me and the iron bridge,
swiveling his curious head,
slipping out to where the sun rakes the water
and filters through the trees that crowd the shore.
And now he dives,
disappears below the surface,
and whil...Read more of this...
by
Olds, Sharon
...cheese, praying for the strength not to
kill herself. We kneeled over the
rubber bodies, gave them baths
carefully, scrubbed their little
orange hands, wrapped them up tight,
said goodnight, never spoke of the
woman like a gaping wound
weeping on the stairs, the man like a stuck
buffalo, baffled, stunned, dragging
arrows in his side. As if we had made a
pact of silence and safety, we kneeled and
dressed those tiny torsos with their elegant
belly-buttons and minuscule ...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...irs
one step at a time, in single file,
gleaming in our sailor suits, two
four year olds with unscratched knees
and scrubbed teeth. Breakfast came
on silver dishes with silver covers
and was set in table center, and Mother
handed out the portions of eggs
and bacon, toast and juice. We could
hear the ocean, not far off, and boats
firing up their engines, and the shouts
of couples in white on the tennis courts.
I thought, Yes, this is the beginning
of a...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...rank obedience)
seeking a balmier game-play for their fingers
they learned languages of metal wood and stone
translated scrubbed land to a fond oasis
built (at last) for themselves and not their service
sowed peace’s patchwork on their shot desires
maybe loosened what dreams had long since bolted
and dared to sigh like breezes (old storms’ goodbyes)
they came as swords (not keen on transformations)
and (landscapes reconditioned) left as ploughshares...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...nd drum,
They packed them on the lorries, seared children of the slum.
Each face seemed soiled and faded, though scrubbed with household soap,
And older than a mother-face, but with less sign of hope:
The knowledge of things evil, of drunken wreck and hag,
Of sordid sounds and voices, the everlasting "nag" –
Oh, men without a battle-song! Oh, men without a flag!
They breed a nation's strength behind each shabby little door,
Where rent-collectors knock for aye, a...Read more of this...
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