Famous Slick Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Slick poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous slick poems. These examples illustrate what a famous slick poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ered it.I have.
I do not recall what had burdened my tongue, but urge you
To think on the slug's white belly, how sick-slick and soft,
On the hairiness of stars, silver, silver, while the silence
Blows like wind by, and on the sea's virgin bosom unveiled
To give suck to the wavering serpent of the moon; and,
In the distance, in plaza, piazza, place, platz, and square,
Boot heels, like history being born, on cobbles bang.
Everything seems an echo of something else.
And whe...Read more of this...
by
Warren, Robert Penn
...tracks, piercing empty, familiar --
The bored center of this vision and condition looked and
looked
Down through the slick pages of the magazine (seeking
The seen and the unseen) and his gaze fell down the well
Of the great darkness under the slick glitter,
And he was only one among eight million riders and
readers.
And all the while under his empty smile the shaking drum
Of the long determined passage passed through him
By his body mimicked and echoed. And then the trai...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...changes a casual passing word
Standing in the Rembrandtesque clefts
And the multipled ma'm'selle trips out:
Neat and slick.
They say you meet the girls at parties
And get deeper than swine in orgies.
When at five-thirty
The fisherman's chilled chips
Lie soggy and heeled under the Arch
Where patchy transparent wrappers cling
To slippery hands jingling the inexact change
That mounted the trustful fisherman's credit:
The stub legged fisher of diplomat
And cool cat...Read more of this...
by
Wignesan, T
...Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise
sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities
you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,
nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller
Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,
permit yourself anger
and permit me mine
which needs neither
your approval nor your suprise
which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease
but ag...Read more of this...
by
Atwood, Margaret
...t now?"
You are braver than your mother
and I am not a timid woman:
what are you whining about now?
My palms itch with slick anger,
and I'm not a timid woman.
You are the woman I can't mention;
my palms itch with slick anger.
You are the heiress of scraped knees.
You are the woman I can't mention
to a woman I want to love.
You are the heiress of scaped knees:
scrub them in mountain water.
To a woman, I want to love
women you could turn into,
scrub them in mountain water,
...Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...death,
Says: “Stand up there ‘gainst that wall,
Para-bumber-shooter-soll!”
Twain? All right! But just give me
Some one slick at repartee!...Read more of this...
by
Butler, Ellis Parker
...s, females,
snow-white cotton bales.
Knee-bone, thigh, hip-bone.
Jazz slips you percussion bone
classified "unknown."
Slick lizard rhythms,
cigar-smoke tunes, straight-gin sky
laced with double moons.
Second-chance rhythms,
don't-give-up riffs: jazz gets HIGH
off can'ts, buts, and ifs....Read more of this...
by
Emanuel, James A
...tion.
Her children, strangers
To childhood's TOYS, play
Best the games of darkened doorways,
Rooftop tag, and know the slick feel of
Other people's property.
Too fat to whore,
Too mad to work,
Searches her dreams for the
Lucky sign and walks bare-handed
Into a den of bereaucrats for her portion.
'They don't give me welfare.
I take it.'...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...way an apple is a pie-to-be,
a bullet is a death-to-be. Or is the future
pressed into it inalterably—woven between
the slick fibers like secret threads
from the U.S. Treasury? Is my flight number
already flashing as cameras grind and the newly-
bereaved moan? Or does it gleam under Arrivals,
digits turned innocuous as those that didn't
win the raffle for a new Ford truck?
If, somewhere, I'm en route now, am I
praying the winged ballpoint I'm strapped into
will write on De...Read more of this...
by
Webb, Charles
...ice sheets sweep this slick mirrored dark place
space as keys that turn in tight, trigger
pain of situations
where we move ever so slowly
so gently into time — traced agony
the bright turning of imagination
so slowly
grooved through revolving doors, opening up to enter
mountains where spirits walk voices, ever so slowly
swept by cold, breathing fire
as these elliptical moments of...Read more of this...
by
Troupe, Quincy
...rieking up our wall,
we still know less than nothing: the utility company continues making
little of the accident,
the slick federal spokesmen still have their evasions in some semblance
of order.
Surely we suspect now we're being lied to, but in the meantime, there
are the roofers,
setting winch-frames, sledging rounds of tar apart, and there I am, on
the curb across, gawking.
I never realized what brutal work it is, how matter-of-factly and harrow-
ingly dangerous.
The...Read more of this...
by
Williams, C K
...wn.
He was soaked with dew, and hungry,
On the hill of Babylon.
The yellow sun was ugly,
Like a raw egg on a plate--
Slick from the sea. He cursed it,
For he knew it sealed his fate.
He saw the long white beaches
And people going to swim,
With towels and beach umbrellas,
But the soldiers were after him.
Far, far below, the people
Were little colored spots,
And the heads of those in swimming
Were floating coconuts.
He heard the peanut vendor
Go peep-peep on his whi...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...ke one's first or last cloth,
envered like kneeling your way into church,
descending into that ascension,
though she be slick as olive oil,
as she climbs each wave like an embezzler of white.
The big deep knows the law as it wears its gray hat,
though the ocean comes in its destiny,
with its one hundred lips,
and in moonlight she comes in her nudity,
flashing breasts made of milk-water,
flashing buttocks made of unkillable lust,
and at night when you enter her
you shine like ...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...als all dressed in silks an' satins, not a wrinkle ner a crease,
Eyes a-battin', teeth a-shinin', haih breshed back ez slick ez grease;
Sku'ts all tucked an' puffed an' ruffled, evah blessed seam an' stitch;
Ef you 'd seen 'em wif deir mistus, could n't swahed to which was which.
Men all dressed up in Prince Alberts, swaller-tails 'u'd tek yo' bref!
I cain't tell you nothin' 'bout it, y' ought to seen it fu' yo'se'f.
Who was dah? Now who you askin'? How you 'spect I gwi...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...high, where mariners had fabled news
Of IS, the whited monster. What it cost
Them is their secret. In the sperm-whale's slick
I see the Quakers drown and hear their cry:
"If God himself had not been on our side,
If God himself had not been on our side,
When the Atlantic rose against us, why,
Then it had swallowed us up quick."
IV
This is the end of the whaleroad and the whale
Who spewed Nantucket bones on the thrashed swell
And stirred the troubled waters to whirlpools
To...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...ned wild boar
Plowing with his snout on Mal Paso Mountain.
The old monster snuffled, "Here are sweet roots,
Fat grubs, slick beetles and sprouted acorns.
The best nation in Europe has fallen,
And that is Finland,
But the stars go over the lonely ocean,"
The old black-bristled boar,
Tearing the sod on Mal Paso Mountain.
"The world's in a bad way, my man,
And bound to be worse before it mends;
Better lie up in the mountain here
Four or five centuries,
While the stars go over ...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...dians,
by manufacturers of soup
and biscuits, Janus-faced hucksters
of their own indexerity;
I can now see now the coal-slick
contanminated fields, a snail or 2,
bile, obsidian, a fish or 3
in the shallows, an obloquy of our
source and our sight.....
has this happend before? is history
a circle that catches itself by the tail,
a dream, a nightmare,
a general's dream, a presidents dream,
a dictators dream...
can't we awaken?
or are the forces of life greater than we are?
can't...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...blazes without being consumed.
Is it from a hill nearby we're watching,
or somewhere in the sky? Could we be flying
on slick runners down into the village?
Is that mare with the elegant legs
truly the size of a house,
and is this the store where everyone bought
those pointed hats, the snowshoes that angle
in contradictory directions?
Isn't that Rin Tin Tin, bigtongued
and bounding and in two places at once?
Down there in the world's corner two children
steal away onto the ...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...ed my name. I thought I would wake up dead.
Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee
Swagger of horsemen.They were slick-faced.
Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.
Their father was what is called a drunkard.
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.
He never came down.They brought everything up to him.
I did not know what a mortgage was.
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.
When ...Read more of this...
by
Warren, Robert Penn
...hat wanton harmless folds
It ev'ry where the Meadow holds;
And its yet muddy back doth lick,
Till as a Chrystal Mirrour slick;
Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt
If they be in it or without.
And for his shade which therein shines,
Narcissus like, the Sun too pines.
Oh what a Pleasure 'tis to hedge
My Temples here with heavy sedge;
Abandoning my lazy Side,
Stretcht as a Bank unto the Tide;
Or to suspend my sliding Foot
On the Osiers undermined Root,
And in its Branch...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
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