Famous Sockets Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Library Of Skulls

...reaming mouth and this time no teeth, no smile.
Here's a few (history)—a murderer,
and this one—see how close their eye sockets!—a thief,
and here's a rack of torturers' skulls
beneath which a longer row of the tortured,
and look: generals' row,
their epaulets
on the shelves to each side of them.
Shelves and shelves, stacks stacked on top of stacks,
floor above floor,
this towering high-rise library
of skulls, not another bone in the place
and just now the squeak of a wheel
o...Read more of this...
by Lux, Thomas


A Poet at Twenty

...nter it, and find the particular maple. He will walk through the door of the maple, and his arms will pull out of their sockets, and the blood will bubble from his mouth, his ears, his *****, and his nostrils. His body will rot. His body will dry in ropey tatters. Maybe he will grow his body again, three years later. Maybe he won't.
There is nothing to do, to keep this from happening.
It occurs to me that the greatest gentleness would put a bullet into his bright eye. And whe...Read more of this...
by Hall, Donald

Blinks through Blood-shot Walks

...some night walks
The camera-eye refugee
Asleep in the half awakefulness
Of the hour
Peers out of his high turbanned sockets:
Hyde Park's through road links
London's diurnally estranged couple -
The Arch and Gate.

When at five-thirty
The foot falls gently
Of the vision cut in dark recesses
And the man, finger gingerly on the fly
Gapes dolefully about
For a while
Exchanges a casual passing word
Standing in the Rembrandtesque clefts
And the multipled ma'm'selle...Read more of this...
by Wignesan, T

Florida

...es, helpless and mild,
die and leave their barnacled shells on the beaches,
and their large white skulls with round eye-sockets
twice the size of a man's.
The palm trees clatter in the stiff breeze
like the bills of the pelicans. The tropical rain comes down
to freshen the tide-looped strings of fading shells:
Job's Tear, the Chinese Alphabet, the scarce Junonia, 
parti-colored pectins and Ladies' Ears,
arranged as on a gray rag of rotted calico, 
the buried Indian Princess's...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth

I Sing the Body Electric

...ont, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side, 
Ribs, belly, back-bone, joints of the back-bone, 
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root, 
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under leg, 
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel; 
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body, or of any
 one’s body, male or female, 
The lung-spong...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


I. The Witch of Coös

...tion,
And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire
Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth.
Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.)
Then he came at me with one hand outstretched,
The way he did in life once; but this time
I struck the hand off brittle on the floor,
And fell back from him on the floor myself.
The finger-pieces slid in all directions.
(Where did I see one of those pieces lately?
Hand me my button-box- it must be there.)
I sat up on the floor and shout...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

In a Churchyard

...y as phosphorus in a grave.

Void notions proper to a buried head! 
Beneath these tombstones here 
Unseenness fills the sockets of the dead, 
Whatever to their souls may now appear; 

And who but those unfathomably deaf
Who quiet all this ground
Could catch, within the ear's diminished clef, 
A music innocent of time and sound? 

What do the living hear, then, when the bell
Hangs plumb within the tower
Of the still church, and still their thoughts compel
Pure tollings that in...Read more of this...
by Wilbur, Richard

Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines

...ea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan

Mental Cases

...like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, -- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

-- These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs t...Read more of this...
by Owen, Wilfred

Song of Solomon

...belly is
           as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.

22:005:015 His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine
           gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.

22:005:016 His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is
           my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

22:006:001 Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women?
           whither is thy beloved turned aside? ...Read more of this...
by Bible, The

The Basket

...the ruin glistens, like a palace of ice! Only two 
black holes swallow
the brilliance of the moon. Deflowered windows, sockets 
without sight.
A man stands before the house. He sees 
the silver-blue moonlight,
and set in it, over his head, staring and flickering, eyes of geranium 
red.

Annette!...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Bombay Train Song

...it the Sewri sewers overflowing?

Beware of pickers of pockets
Who surround and slash with knife
Careful of your arm’s sockets
Lest they dislocate and misery make life.

Welcome to Bombay’s bustling trains
Hold on fast as if you are insane!...Read more of this...
by Matthew, John

The Death Of Marie Toro

...s, and chews the cud of bitter souvenirs;
Beneath his mop of grizzled hair his cheeks are gouged with pain,
The saffron sockets of his eyes are hollowed out with tears.
Well, one night in the D'Harcourt's din I saw him in his place,
When suddenly the door was swung, a woman halted there;
A woman cowering like a dog, with white and haggard face,
A broken creature, bent of spine, a daughter of Despair.
She looked and looked, as to her breast she held some withered bloom;
"Too l...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Jacquerie A Fragment

...isy,
And some were overfilmed by sense, and some
Blazed with ambition's wild, unsteady fire,
And some were burnt i' the sockets black, and some
Were dead as embers when the fire is out.
A curious zone circled the Spectre's waist,
Which seemed with strange device to symbol Time.
It was a silver-gleaming thread of day
Spiral about a jet-black band of night.
This zone seemed ever to contract and all
The frame with momentary spasms heaved
In the strangling traction which did neve...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Light o the Moon

...-Worms 
Are wreathed around her brow. 

The Moon-Worms are a doughty race: 
They eat her gray and golden face. 
Her eye-sockets dead, and molding head: 
These caverns are their dwelling-place. 

The Moon-Worms, serpents of the skies, 
From the great hollows of her eyes 
Behold all souls, and they are wise: 
With tiny, keen and icy eyes, 
Behold how each man sins and dies. 

When Earth in gold-corruption lies 
Long dead, the moon-worm butterflies 
On cyclone wings will reach t...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

The Room Of My Life

...t is never shut,
the books, each a contestant in a beauty contest,
the black chair, a dog coffin made of Naugahyde,
the sockets on the wall
waiting like a cave of bees,
the gold rug
a conversation of heels and toes,
the fireplace
a knife waiting for someone to pick it up,
the sofa, exhausted with the exertion of a whore,
the phone
two flowers taking root in its crotch,
the doors
opening and closing like sea clams,
the lights
poking at me,
lighting up both the soil and the lau...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Witchs Life

...animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup?
Maybe I have plugged up my sockets
to keep the gods in?
Maybe, although my heart
is a kitten of butter,
I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.
Yes. It is the witch's life,
climbing the primordial climb,
a dream within a dream,
then sitting here
holding a basket of fire....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Whats The Use Of A Title?

...poison,rope what- 
ever... 
they rip their arms off, 
throw themselves out of windows, 
they pull their eyes out of the sockets, 
reject love 
reject hate 
reject,reject. 

they do'nt make it 
the beautiful can't endure, 
they are butterflies 
they are doves 
they are sparrows, 
they dont make it. 

onetall shot of flame 
while the old men play checkers in the park 
one flame,one good flame 
while the old men play checkers in the park 
in the sun. 

the beautiful are found in...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

Whispers of Immortality

...breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Your Feet

...
and that your sweet weight 
rises upon them. 
Your waist and your breasts, 
the doubled purple 
of your nipples, 
the sockets of your eyes 
that have just flown away, 
your wide fruit mouth, 
your red tresses, 
my little tower. 
But I love your feet 
only because they walked 
upon the earth and upon 
the wind and upon the waters, 
until they found me....Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo

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