Home » Poems » Best » Robert Warlov » Best Robert Warlov Poems

Best Poems Written by Robert Warlov

Below are the all-time best Robert Warlov poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

Main Street Laureate

(On the state of American Poetry-  A Non-Poem Poem )




I'm Poet Laureate Of Main Street.
They voted.  I won.

' came down to me and the kid whose dog craps on everyone's lawns.

His poem was about a missing red crayon; mine: the stop-sign someone stole from the corner of Elm and Main (I think I know who did it too).

Is it coincident both poems are about loss? 
Probably not. Poetry is at it's best when expressing loss.

He'll probably win the position back next year with a weepy poem about not having been chosen Poet Laureate Of Main Street.

That's fine with me, as long as he keeps that damn dog in his own yard.

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

You Wanna From New York

  Your Invitation 





You wanna from New York-

talk skin-teeth stories

b|tch brick-falling buildings

knive bus choking fumes-

Proud-over cracked sidewalks

holy street-people

and cracked-dreams?


You wanna scar of alley cans and 

rooftop bums who eat 

lost pink Spaldin® balls?


You coo city-drums and garbage-glory-

Swag-shoulder every party-

Shoe your claim by kitchen-fame...

Then GO THERE!


New York will school your past and 

take your part.

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

China

In China once
under a patched
sail canopy

at tables and stools
and later
alone

remembering days
when all
seemed all
important

the politics with friends
by day

and how the breeze
by night conspired 

with
her golden hair.



Now I watch
the honey-draped fishing-dingies

return

like strays
of twilight

they glide in 
sad-silence

finally to settle
in place

where they rock

gently
all night

under a surrender of stars.


Everything moving to its orbit
everything seperating in time



alone



all the mistakes
the misunderstandings

off on their own trajectories
fullfilling their own destinies

all but the waitress here

who moves still
like a silken dream
across the sea-dimmed floor

bringing pots of hot
chinese-tea
all night long

never saying a word
not a single word

just smiling
her knowing smile.

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

S Hip

( An inquiry into form )

_____________________




There-                            Not here?


Start over . . .                A planet and good for YOU!   maybe-


 ' bigger than a breadbox?

So-     vegetable!    GREEN     like ex spec tations

    
HERE-                    n OT  THERE?


Not again?!             therefore  "we see"?


NO      Justa                 s  p  a  c  e        (maybe)

with a shape!          Like mathematicians
                                                                                                     l
    (they gather in blue confusion)    so?                               l
                                                                                                   i
So a word with a Sumar•  add•  dress•                               h
                                                                     A summer address?
    ·  The cats break-open the weeping kitchen  ·            e
                                                                                              h
BROWN then         like perfect patterns        just over  t  
                                                        
                                                         and

                                              E = Q = U = A = L

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

Breakfast Beer Hike Ooo

I turned my back on God.
Someone said; "He's everywhere."
' can't even do that right.


__________________________

Comments:

Shivarra:  Well, seems to be alot of that going on lately...people turning their backs on God... [ ] What I want to know is '"where's the beer?" 

R.W. :   I think the beer is everywhere too.

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

Love's Secret Calling

( For Deena ~ A.K.A. 'Blushing Blonde'. An invitation to inspiration.)


Tickle my black brook
when foolish drinkers go

hide me in the sentinal green

secret my eyes by the bank
where I watch for you

and when you come

we will match our whispers
to the washed stone

holding hands in the envious fern

We will dress our forest
in echoes of cathedral-light

and sleep in the holy-turning of stars

_____________________

©© 2000

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

The Poets Predicament

Where will I find that one-best thing
to say in that way that is best

better words keep falling to paper

and falling but
say I find you instead

and falling in love I keep falling

and falling
what better hoped for or said

Love is always its best

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

Paradise Waters of the Gulf

Green

the confusing reverence of the place
the holy-waters of the gulf

white eucharist sand trucked-in sunday anew

and flowers  ever fresh
renew the question

I watch clouds  west

overrun
spilling sun
in the horizon

and comes rain each day  warm

same time
same slow way
like the same song

then I think

such simple acts
as prayer hands together press

or happiness
gone to hearts reach again.

Unable to feel these overtures of sky and air and light  yet
might I find reason here to live

 if

at all

_________________
©© 2000

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

Gravitational Whims

 ( "Write the truest sentence you know."  - F. Scott Fitzgerald ) 


Variant plurals suffering suffixation's whims;
fly-tomatoes and the valley boo-mouse,
when the sheep alumnus in a mother-in-law seed,
animosity-cat tiptoes in the church alchemy,
genetic forty-winks sing noun names; brag and blame.

Go to the spy picnic early, the heavy earth hides,
the shy long-cot swings over the screeching pond.

She wont let me say the words; I love her,
an ice-cream non-communist with a gypsy-grace and a smorgasbord-rub,
( I have tone-deaf toothpaste and my megawatt chow miens)

It’s enough to make you gang your hemihedral in a jolt-wagon.
Someone aught to have better sea-sense. Not me-
I’m palm-crucified. My bulls-eye is a hearse!

She might marry me to a multi-syllabic drainage or  I might climb the scrupulous oak.

Details | Robert Warlov Poem

Unfinished Road

 ( fr. The Tape Recordings  ·  An Incantation )





There is a road


there is a road


there is a road


there is a road 


a road and i'd say
if it were black

if it were mine

and say
if there were time 


There is a road    Blue Sky!


a road and blue sky
and once


there was time
time that had time

enough to hide


Time is time
here in a road that is not    Not Mine

In a tree in one dead limb
a dead tree 

its dead arm and the great nest
of a great bird   Now Gone

and the great gray pinnacle rising from it