Cruise lines
ships full of plague and pleasure
take their meat people all about
to see these others
loving and industrious
for entertainment
Cheerful poems
Cheerful poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Oblivious
what harm might come from joy
God knows
how little fit we are for it
night comes into the garden
as it ought to
raw as all life
and we discourse of our own tricks
talking and laughing
at the folly of some neighbor
Dressing up for a dressing-down
in my old cloth suit
my usual answer
is to dance
dressed in a new disappointment
I go blank as
any messenger
dressed or undressed
after a little dancing
how little clothes cover us
so we lie
in our stockings and drawers
and all our clothes sleep
Fashion-forward
a head to alter for the king
and a hand to set between us
like a used tool
we invent a new fashion
good for nothing but
to silver over age
Home body
the office made me love
to stay at home
sitting up after supper
as fat and full as a bell of plague
Snack
I bit into a kind word
there had been nothing to dine on in the house
and it was a treat
the great dark ink of it
Writing life
morning is the best poem
afternoon papers it over
all settled things must break in pieces
I believe in my sleep
waked in the night by snoring
I laugh to recollect it
In a nutshell
An empty half-walnut shell lay
upturned on the verandah.
The wren fluttered down
& poked at it with his bill,
hopping all around it
in his big clown feet.
The black walnut half
had two large openings
like holes in a round kayak.
The wren probed one
& then the other, leaving nothing
to chance.
It was time for tea on the verandah,
but nobody came.
The wren flew off.
The walnut shell rocked a few times
Recurrence
a misting morning
my disease come back I drink
to my physician
Erectile dysfunction
at my peak
like God not present
to my wife
In a time of plague
hard rain and wind
against the plague house
I walk in so merry a company
I may die with laughing
Part of the solution
After weeks of drought,
rain falling in the night
smells so fresh:
wet leaves & ozone
& the soil coming to life.
I keep going outside
to pee off the porch.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
Or try: