My Favorite Poems and Stories (There's pretty many of 'em...so watch out)
Screw this poety crap...Take me straight to the Story(s)...
"Screaming Euphoria" by: Liz Brooks
Today I found my destiny
and realized nothing�s here for me.
I found the heart I never had,
the book I never wrote.
I placed the love I never gave
in the pocket of my coat.
I met the friends I never made,
the truth I never told,
and now the words I never spoke,
have all but turned to gold.
I walked the halls I�d never seen,
places I�d never been.
All the kindness I never showed
has now become my sin.
I miss the things I never dreamt,
the sun that never shined.
All my future goals and plans
I must have left behind.
I never knew that it could kill
to leave things left undone,
but then today I realized.
Tomorrow�s just begun.
"untitled" By: Lisa Nelson
You leave me with little to say
I told you my feelings
You pushed them away
What am I supposed to do
I keep setting myself up
To get knocked down by you
If you only could see
What this is doing to me
Im torn up inside
Slowly losing my pride
I dont want to lose you
You mean too much to me
Why can't you tell me whats going on
This isnt how things should be.
"untitled 2" By: Lisa Nelson
...What I'm feeling now,
cannot be explained.
Feelings were returned,
then taken away.
I'll say that I am fine,
like I always do.
Tough on the outside.
Inside, pain anew
"untitled 3" By: Lisa Nelson
Your words pull me into a fantasy world.
A place where promises come through.
Quickly, the illusion fades.
I put too much trust in you.
High hopes, blown away.
Looking foolish again.
Now, I'll stay to myself.
You can't hurt me then.
�In the Garden� By: Anonymous
In the garden there strayed
A beautiful maid
As fairs as the flowers of the morn;
The first hour of her life
She was made a man�s wife,
And was buried before she was born.
�Hero and Leander� By: John Donne
Both robbed of air, we both lie in one ground,
Both of whom one fire had burnt, one water drowned.
�Alter! When the hills do� By: Emily Dickinson
Alter! When the hills do.
Falter! When the sun
Question if his glory
Be the perfect one.
Surfeit! When the daffodil
Doth of the dew.
Even as herself, Sir,
I will of you.
�For a Lamb� By: Richard Eberhart
I saw on the slant hill a putrid lamb,
Propped with daises. The sleep looked deep.
The face nudged in the green pillow
But the guts were out for crows to eat.
Where�s the lamb? whose tender plaint
Said all for the mute breezes.
Say he�s in the wind somewhere,
Say, there�s a lamb in the daises.
�Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness�
By: Alexander Pope
I am his Highness� dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
�Nothing Gold Can Stay� By: Robert Frost
Nature�s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf�s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
�Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries� By: A. E. Housman
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth�s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth�s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
�Down by the Salley Gardens� By: William Butler Yeats
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
�The Span of Life� By: Robert Frost
The old dog barks backward without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.
�Eight O�Clock� By: A. E. Housman
He stood, and heard the steeple
Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.
One, two, three, four, to market-place and people
It tossed them down.
Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.
�A Handful of Limericks�
There was a young lady from Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
There was a young maid who said, �Why
can�t I look in my ear with my eye?
If I put my mind to it,
I�m sure I can do it.
You never can tell till you try.�
�The Imperfect Paradise� By: Linda Pastan
If God had stopped work after the fifth day
With Eden full of vegetables and fruits,
If oak and lilac held exclusive sway
Over a kingdom made of stems and roots,
If landscape were the genius of creation
And neither man nor serpent played a role
And God must look to wind for lamentation
And not to picture postcards of the soul,
Would he have rested on his bank of cloud
With nothing in the universe to lose,
Or would he hunger for a human crowd?
Which would a wise and just creator choose:
The green hosannas of a budding leaf
Or the strict contract between love and grief?
�God�s Will for You and Me� By: unknown
Just to be tender, just to be true,
Just to be glad the whole day through,
Just to be merciful, just to be mild,
Just to be trustful as a child,
Just to be gentle and kind and sweet,
Just to be helpful with willing feet,
Just to be cheery when things go wrong,
Just to drive sadness away with a song,
Whether the hour is dark or bright,
Just to be loyal to God and right,
Just to believe that God knows best,
Just in his promises ever to rest-
Just to let love be our daily key,
That is God�s will for you and me.
�A Poison Tree� By: unknown
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
�Ending� By: Gavin Ewart
The love we thought would never stop
now cools like a congealing chop.
The kisses that were hot as curry
are bid-pecks taken in a hurry.
The hands that held electric charges
now lie inert as four moored barges.
The feet that ran to meet a date
are running slow and running late.
The eyes that shone and seldom shut
are victims of a power cut.
The parts that then transmitted joy
are now reserved and cold and coy.
Romance, expected once to stay,
has left a note saying GONE AWAY.
�Never Again Would Birds� Song Be the Same� By: Robert Frost
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds� song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.
�Richard Cory� By: Edward Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
�Good-morning,� and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich-yes, richer than a king-
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and curse the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
�Western Wind� By: anonymous
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ! If my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!
�The Computation� By: John Donne
For the first twenty years since yesterday
I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away;
For forty more I fed on favors past,
And forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last.
Tears drowned one hundred, and sighs blew out two;
A thousand, I did neither think nor do,
Or not divide, all being one thought of you.
Or, in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call not this long life; but think that I
Am, by being dead, immortal. Can ghosts die?
�The Hound� By: Robert Francis
Life the hound
Equivocal
Comes at a bound
Either to rend me
Or to befriend me.
I cannot tell
The hound�s intent
Till he has sprung
At my bare hand
With teeth or tongue.
Meanwhile I stand
And wait the event.
�The Man He Killed� By: Thomas Hardy
Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
I shot him dead because-
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That�s clear enough; although
He though he�d �list, perhaps,
Off-hand-like-just as I-
Was out of work-had sold his traps-
No other reason why.
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You�d treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.
�Bereft� By: Robert Frost
Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking downhill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and day was past.
Somber clouds in the west were massed.
Out in the porch�s sagging floor
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me a secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.
�Dream Deferred� By: Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
�The Road Not Taken� By: Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
�Fire and Ice� By: Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I�ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
�The Adversary� By: Phyllis McGinley
A mother�s hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.
�Ozymandias� By: Percy Bysshe Shelly
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert�Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
�My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!�
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
�On Treason� By: Sir John Harington
Treason doth never prosper: what�s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
�The State� By: Randall Farrell
When they killed my mother it made me nervous;
I thought to myself, it was right:
Of course she was crazy, and how she ate!
And she died, after all, in her way, for the State.
But I minded: how queer it was to stare
At one of them not sitting there.
When they drafted Sister I said all night,
�It�s healthier there in the fields��
And I�d think, �Now I�m helping to win the War,�
When the neighbors came in, as they did, with my meals.
And I was, I was; but I was scared
With only one of them sitting there.
When they took my cat for the Army Corps
Of Conservation and Supply,
I though of him there in the cold with the mice
And I cried, and I cried, and I wanted to die.
They were there, and I saw them, and that is my life.
Now there�s nothing. I�m dead, and I want to die.
�Earth� By: John Hall Wheelock
�A planet doesn�t explode on itself,� said drily
the Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air-
�That they were able to do it is proof that highly
intelligent beings must have been living there.�
�92� By: Shakespeare (From the play Macbeth)
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life�s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
�Out, Out-� By: Robert Frost
The buzz-saw snarled and rattles in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell the �Supper.� At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy�s hand, or seemed to leap-
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
They boy�s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all-
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man�s work, though a child at heart-
He saw all spoiled. �Don�t let him cut my hand off-
The doctor, when he comes. Don�t let him, sister!�
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then-the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No on believed. They listened at his heart.
Little-less-nothing!-and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
�How To Start A Fire� By: Alexis Neptune
In some it is never lit,
Straw and cinders smoking forever as they float through ghost-life
They smother flames in fear,
And die from lack of heat.
In others it cattle herds them to destruction,
Relentless in hunger,
It peruses them from one passion to another,
Until their whole landscape is charcoal.
In few it creeps across dry ground,
Slow and seemingly subdued,
But it drives them nonetheless,
To great heights as they escape the cinders,
To great works as they climb to false safety.
In the end the product is the same for all,
In the end the fire will consume them.
How to start a fire?
Are you sure you want to know?
A Short Story
�The Scorpion and the Frog� By: unknown
Once there was a scorpion who needed to cross the river. He happened across a frog and asked if the frog could ferry him across. The frog said, �I can�t trust you. You will just kill me after I take you across.� To this the scorpion replied, �I promise I will not kill you. You can trust me.� Reluctantly, the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. The farther they got from land, the more confident the frog grew in the scorpion�s promise. However, once they were half way across the river, the scorpion stung the frog. The frog screamed in pain, �Why did you do that? You promised not to kill me! Now we�re both going to die!� The scorpion, peaceful and serene, said simply, �I can�t help it. I�m a scorpion.�
What kind of guy likes poems?