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Famous Ticket Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Kipling, Rudyard
...lake
Pegs I drank when I was dry --
 This observe for old sake's sake.

To the railway station hie,
 There a single ticket take
For Umballa -- goods-train -- I
 Shall not mind delay or shake.
I shall rest contentedly
 Spite of clamor coolies make;
Thus in state and dignity
 Send me up for old sake's sake.

Next the sleepy Babu wake,
 Book a Kalka van "for four."
Few, I think, will care to make
 Journeys with me any more
As they used to do of yore.
 I shall...Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...le-dyed; 
The News has always been Republican. 
Fairbanks, he says to me, 'Help us this year,' 
Meaning by us their ticket. 'No,' I says, 
'I can't and won't. You've been in long enough: 
It's time you turned around and boosted us. 
You'll have to pay me more than ten a week 
If I'm expected to elect Bill Taft. 
I doubt if I could do it anyway.'" 
"You seem to shape the paper's policy." 
"You see I'm in with everybody, know 'em all. 
I almost k...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ed in the evening paper, 
the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash 
ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her. 
This was the rude kill of her; two planes cracking 
in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds. 
And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking 
bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards 
to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature 
photograph left, too long now for fear to remember. 
Special to...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...boys. 
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
 munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a 
 handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the 
 speeches were free everybody was angelic and 
 sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
 cere you have no idea what a good thing the 
 party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand 
 old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me 
 cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody 
 must have been a spy. 
America...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...tin' on a cracker box an' spittin' in the stove,
I took a sudden notion that I'd kindo' like to rove;
An' so I bought a ticket, jest as easy as could be,
From Pumpkinville in Idaho to Rome in Italy;
An' found myself in seven days of mostly atmosphere
A-starin' at a statoo called Appoller Belvydeer.

Now I'm a rum-soaked sinner, an' religion ain't my plan,
Yet, I was flabbergasted by that gol-darned Vattyican;
An' when I seed Saint Peter's dome, all I could do was swear,
T...Read more of this...



by Sandburg, Carl
...ion paid for by the farmer
sending it to market,
While the hoboes are law-breakers in riding a railroad
train without a ticket.
It reminded me of ten days I spent in the Allegheny
County jail in Pittsburgh.
I got ten days even though I was a veteran of the
Spanish-American war.
Cooped in the same cell with me was an old man, a
bricklayer and a booze-fighter.
But it just happened he, too, was a veteran soldier, and
he had fought to preserve the Union and free t...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...at
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead....Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...d it.
Hurriedly he packed his boxes:
Hurriedly the porter trundled
On a barrow all his boxes:
Hurriedly he took his ticket:
Hurriedly the train received him:
Thus departed Hiawatha....Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...d it.
Hurriedly he packed his boxes:
Hurriedly the porter trundled
On a barrow all his boxes:
Hurriedly he took his ticket:
Hurriedly the train received him:...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...d it.
Hurriedly he packed his boxes:
Hurriedly the porter trundled
On a barrow all his boxes:
Hurriedly he took his ticket:
Hurriedly the train received him:
Thus departed Hiawatha....Read more of this...

by Rothenberg, Jerome
...a home
but sit with others
shirtless, waiting
for the moon to rise.
I am a warrior
grown old.
The number on my ticket 
tells the time.
I seldom wash
& wear a string 
around my throat
until it crumbles.
See yourself for love
the fool advises
& the wise man murmurs
Spill it now!
Your glass is never
empty!
I see your arm
the color of 
wild lilacs.
It is not too late
for memory.
Days together are
like days apart....Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...g at her heels.

I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.

A bus ticket in her hand.

Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.

I reached under the bed for my menthols
and she asked if I ever thought of cancer.

Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead
in the distance where it doesn't matter

And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,
s...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...eparted souls
Who risk'd their fate on Popish bulls,
And find St. Peter, at the wicket,
Refuse to countersign their ticket,
When driven to purgatory back,
With each his pardon in his pack;
Than Tories, must'ring at their stations,
On faith of royal proclamations.
As Pagan chiefs at every crisis,
Confirm'd their leagues by sacrifices,
And herds of beasts, to all their deities,
Oblations fell, at close of treaties:
Cornwallis thus, in ancient fashion,
Concludes his gran...Read more of this...

by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...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 having my back 
To the engine. I sat like a spider and spun 
Time backward out of m...Read more of this...

by Webb, Charles
...The ticket settles on my desk: a paper tongue
pronouncing "Go away;" a flattened seed
from which a thousand-mile leap through the air can grow.

It's pure potential: a vacation-to-be
the 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...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...with your best hat over your face. I cried
because I was seventeen. I am older now.
I read how your student ticket admitted you
into the private chapel of the Vatican and how
you cheered with the others, as we used to do
on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November
you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll,
float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors,
to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional
breeze. You worked your New England c...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...central heating boiler’s on the blink,

The house is on fucking fire!”



So I was left with the offer of being raffle-ticket tout as a special favour,

Some recompense for giving over two entire newsletters to Jimmy’s work:

The words of the letter before his stroke still burned. “I don’t know why

They omitted me, Armitage and Harrison were my best mates once. You and I

Must meet.”



A whole year’s silence until the card with its cryptic message

‘Jimmy’s rec...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...hastened holy joy, --
Epileptic fits don't matter in Political employ, --
Wired three short words to Carrie -- took his ticket, packed his kit --
Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long, lingering fit.

Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read -- and laughed until she wept --
Mrs. Boffkin's warning letter on the "wretched epilept." . . .
Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits
Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Slear...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...se and so out of a farm
At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn
To earn a living on the Concord railroad,
As under-ticket-agent at a station
Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets,
Was setting out, up track and down, not plants
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars
That varied in their hue from red to green.

He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for stargazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass ba...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. 
My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness. 
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. 
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness. 

Man is a curious brute — he pets his fancies — 
Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury. 
So he will be, tho' law be clear as crystal, 
Tho' all men plan...Read more of this...

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