Haiku
Napped half the day;
no one
punished me!
— Issa (trans. Robert Hass)
All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.
— Issa (trans. Robert Hass)
My Life Has Been the Poem I Would Have Writ
My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.
Henry David Thoreau
*
We lose — because we win —
Gamblers — recollecting which
Toss their dice again!
— Emily Dickinson
I Walked in a Desert
I walked in a desert.
And I cried,
"Ah, God, take me from this place!"
A voice said, "It is no desert."
I cried, "Well, But —
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon."
A voice said, "It is no desert."
— Stephen Crane
The Span of Life
The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.
— Robert Frost
A Life
Innocence?
In a sense.
In no sense!
Was that it?
Was that it?
Was that it?
That was it.
— Howard Nemerov
Their Sex Life
One Failure on
Top of another.
— A. R. Ammons
Coward
Bravery runs in my family.
— A. R. Ammons
I Had Thought Things Were Going Along Well
But I was mistaken.
— John Ashbery
ABC
Any body can die, evidently. Few
Go happily, irradiating joy,
Knowledge, love. Many
Need oblivion, painkillers,
Quickest respite.
Sweet time unafflicted,
Various world:
X=your zenith.
— Robert Pinsky
Function
You say I but
you’re a function
of your body.
It stops, you do.
–Bruce Kawin
Marriage
So much for the fighting
and the sex,
I want to be alone
with you in the next room.
— Kathleen Ossip