Famous Spit Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Skyscraper

by Carl Sandburg
 BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and
has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul...Read more of this...

thirteeners

by Rg Gregory
 18
if you want a revolution attack
symbols not systems - the simple forms
that (blithely) give the truth away
tying down millions to their terms
quietly with no one answering back

where the stage is makes the play
keeps actors (meanings) to those norms
stability requires - change tack
(remove the stage) violent storms
will sweep the old regime away

eventually there'll be no going back
once new symbols breed...Read more of this...

Observation Car

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 To be put on the train and kissed and given my ticket, 
Then the station slid backward, the shops and the neon lighting, 
Reeling off in a drunken blur, with a whole pound note in my pocket 
And the holiday packed with Perhaps. It used to be very exciting. 

The present and past were enough. I did not mind...Read more of this...

Buying The Whore

by Anne Sexton
 You are the roast beef I have purchased
and I stuff you with my very own onion.

You are a boat I have rented by the hour
and I steer you with my rage until you run aground.

You are a glass that I have paid to shatter
and I swallow the pieces down with my spit.

You are the grate I warm my trembling...Read more of this...

The Most

by Charles Bukowski
 here comes the fishhead singing
here comes the baked potato in drag
here comes nothing to do all day long
here comes another night of no sleep
here comes the phone wringing the wrong tone
here comes a termite with a banjo
here comes a flagpole with blank eyes
here comes a a cat and a dog wearing nylons
here comes a machine gun saying
here comes bacon...Read more of this...

Holy Sonnet XI: Spit In My Face You Jews And Pierce My Side

by John Donne
 Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side,
Buffet, and scoff, scourge, and crucify me,
For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he
Who could do no iniquity hath died:
But by my death can not be satisfied
My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety:
They killed once an inglorious man, but I
Crucify him daily, being now glorified.
Oh let me, then, his...Read more of this...

The Lone Trail

by Robert William Service
 Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,
Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit.
Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-by;
The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die.

The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried;
You tread on the heels of the many, till...Read more of this...

In A Light Time

by Philip Levine
 The alder shudders in the April winds 
off the moon. No one is awake and yet 
sunlight streams across 
the hundred still beds 
of the public wards 
for children. At ten 
do we truly sleep 
in a blessed sleep 
guarded by angels 
and social workers? 
Do we dream of gold 
found in secret trunks 
in familiar rooms? 
Do we...Read more of this...

Flee On Your Donkey

by Anne Sexton
 Because there was no other place
to flee to,
I came back to the scene of the disordered senses,
came back last night at midnight,
arriving in the thick June night
without luggage or defenses,
giving up my car keys and my cash,
keeping only a pack of Salem cigarettes
the way a child holds on to a toy.
I signed myself in where a stranger
puts the inked-in...Read more of this...

Benediction

by Charles Baudelaire
 When, by decree of the supreme power,
The Poet appears in this annoyed world,
His mother, blasphemous out of horror
At God's pity, cries out with fists curled:

"Ah! I'd rather You'd will me a snake's skin
Than to keep feeding this monstrous slur!
I curse that night's ephemera are sins
To make my womb atone for pleasure.

"Since You have chosen me from all the brides
To...Read more of this...

Old Bob

by Robert William Service
 I guess folks think I'm mighty dumb
 Since Jack and Jim and Joe
Have hit the trail to Kingdom Come
 And left me here below:
Since Death, the bastard, bowled them out,
 And left me faced with--Doubt.

My pals have all passed out on me
 And I am by my lone;
Old Bill was last, and now I see
 His name cut on...Read more of this...

The Proud Poet

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Shaemas O Sheel)

One winter night a Devil came and sat upon my bed,
His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was full of crime.
"Why don't you take up fancy work, or embroidery?" he said,
"For a needle is as manly a tool as a pen that makes a rhyme!"
"You little ugly Devil," said I, "go back to Hell
For...Read more of this...

Ode To Meaning

by Robert Pinsky
 Dire one and desired one,
Savior, sentencer--

In an old allegory you would carry
A chained alphabet of tokens:

Ankh Badge Cross.
Dragon,
Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,
Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
Naked omphalos pierced
By quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unborn
Vein of will, xenophile
Yearning out of Zero.

Untrusting I court you. Wavering
I seek your face, I read
That Crusoe's knife
Reeked of you, that to defile you
The...Read more of this...

on why it is necessary to talk kindly to frogs

by Rg Gregory
 i met a frog in my garden today
lurking under a stone - it said
there used to be a pond here
i know i said i had to dig it up

pity said the frog and looked at me
as if i was the thickest mortal
a garden without water it croaked
is worse than a tongue without spit

there's a pond next door i said
you...Read more of this...

Finality

by Robert William Service
 When I am dead I will not care
How future generations fare,
For I will be so unaware.

Though fields their slain has carpeted,
And seas be salt with tears they shed,
Not one I'll waste, for I'll be dead.

Though atom bombs in ashes lay
Their skyey cities of to-day,
With carrion lips I cannot pray.

Though ruin reigns and madness raves,
And cowering men creep back in...Read more of this...

Barefoot

by Anne Sexton
 Loving me with my shows off
means loving my long brown legs,
sweet dears, as good as spoons;
and my feet, those two children
let out to play naked. Intricate nubs,
my toes. No longer bound.
And what's more, see toenails and
all ten stages, root by root.
All spirited and wild, this little
piggy went to market and this little piggy
stayed. Long brown legs and long brown...Read more of this...

My Boss

by Robert William Service
 My Boss keeps sporty girls, they say;
His belly's big with cheer.
He squanders in a single day
What I make in a year.
For I must toil with bloody sweat,
And body bent and scarred,
While my whole life-gain he could bet
Upon a single card.

By Boss is big and I am small;
I slave to keep him rich.
He'd look at me like scum and call
Me...Read more of this...

Life

by Charlotte Bronte
 I leave the office, take the stairs,
in time to mail a letter
before 3 in the afternoon--the last dispatch.
The red, white and blue air mail
falls past the slot for foreign mail
and hits bottom with a sound
that tells me my letter is alone.
They will have to bring in a plane
from a place of coastline and beaches,
from a climate of fresh figs...Read more of this...

Dumb

by Aleister Crowley
 Gabriel whispered in mine ear
His archangelic poesie.
How can I write? I only hear
The sobbing murmur of the sea.

Raphael breathed and bade me pass
His rapt evangel to mankind;
I cannot even match, alas!
The ululation of the wind.

The gross grey gods like gargoyles spit
On every poet's holy head;
No mustard-seed of truth or wit
In those curst furrows, quick or dead!

A tithe of what...Read more of this...

Hate

by Robert William Service
 I had a bitter enemy,
His heart to hate he gave,
And when I died he swore that he
Would dance upon my grave;
That he would leap and laugh because
A livid corpse was I,
And that's the reason why I was
In no great haste to die. 

And then - such is the quirk of fate,
One day with joy I read,
Despite his vitalizing hate
My...Read more of this...

the bouncing spider

by Rg Gregory
 schnyder schnyder
the bouncing spider
had a song 
wound up inside her

she'd had it taped
on a silken spool
this was the song
she sang as a rule

o little fly
come be my friend
i have fly's gold
for you to spend

i'll wrap you in silks
to make you pretty
if you refuse
then more's the pity

the silk-voice warbled
through the wood
the best bird-song
didn't seem so good

but no flies came
they were...Read more of this...

For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry (excerpt Jubilate Agno)

by Christopher Smart
 For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. 
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk,...Read more of this...

A Broadway Pageant

by Walt Whitman
 1
OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come, 
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, 
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, 
Ride to-day through Manhattan. 

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold, 
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers, 
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; 
But...Read more of this...

Heretics Tragedy The

by Robert Browning
 A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE.

ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS.
A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT,
CANON-REGULAR OF SAID JODOCUS-BY-THE-BAR,
YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE, _Virgilius._ 
AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG 
AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALES. GAVISUS
ERAM, _Jessides._

(It would seem to be a glimpse from the
burning of Jacques du Bourg-Mulay, at Paris,
A. D. 1314; as distorted by the refraction from
Flemish brain to brain, during the course of
a couple...Read more of this...

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

by Robert Browning
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who...Read more of this...

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