jyq 23-40

"Stripper poles, Prizes, Condoms and Roses"

"blindfolded, and submerged in pudding"

"dont bet your toothfairy money"

"twin trails of urine behind them"

"declare war on flavor"

"tortured your face"

"a house guest who called home"

"bursting with jazz"

"grandpa means someone whose old & gray"

"little rocket ship where dogs go pee pee"

"well quaffed foreign friend"

"hug vegetables like greek goddesses"

 " attitude on teams"

"this planet is now the battleground"

 "does the devil know the bible"

 "saved me from immorality"

"re-program me"

"will sin ever rise up again"

Total poems:

There are actually 48 improvs here total, I left 2 out by mistake.

The rest. Poems 23 Through 50

A. E. Stallings

Explaining an Affinity for Bats

That they sing—not the way the songbird sings
But travel by a sort of song that rings
boomeranging off objects back to ears
that create a way for blind eyes 
and path way six feet wide
each path for the windspand of another bat
They gust through winds, and travel quickly
through light to another place of darkness again
Unless they stop to hunt, snatching up scarce rats
and small mammals

James Dickey

Cherrylog Road

Off Highway 106
At Cherrylog Road I entered
Headlights midsting across blacktop roadways
and repeated whitestripes, led my front wheels
while the back follows suit.
Cars in front, beside and behind pass me
while I was steady drifting.
98' Ford truck, in particular
Rode hurriedly, almost to my back bumper.
Continued around me and sped off into the horizon






Claude McKay

The Harlem Dancer

She sang and danced on gracefully and calm
The light fell onto her like a glistening pearl
She used it to guide her moves
Provacatively and dazzling
She hypnotized her patrons
advising them where her payment should go
She accepted tips and chips
She known around the town, in this city of sin.
Away to the new end.



Anne Sexton

You, Doctor Martin

In school, There are no knives
for cutting your throat. Or axes
for killing the girl who reminds me
that I'm nothing. Class is the worst
and everyone there knows they're better.
My daydreams are me dying, glaring into
a white board of Pergatory.
I ended here, the worst part of my life
was the next eight hours at Martin High



Russell Edson

Ape

Try a piece of its gum, I’ve stuffed its mouth with bread, said mother.
He bit in to it intensely, cosistently chewing
the new taste he would become to know
He was a an ape, yes
but the deep tar and honey paste was chewy
So much that you could stretch it
with your tongue and blow in it.
It went down his throat tough and tight
for the gum refused to go down,
while the weight of grainy bread
forced it down



Robert Lowell

Father’s Bedroom

In my Father’s bedroom:
There are old reading gases
each frame thicker than the next.
The Polish Theory sat on his nightstand
and rows of books followed on a shelf,
underneathe.
He wore slacks and cadagains most frequenty
And his multicolored blue one still hand up
on the back of hos reading chair across from the bed
Still made neatly, from the last day he left
and went into the hospital.



Jorie Graham

Salmon


From the deep ocean of the given Justice.
Aspen. Where mountains stand high in the sky.
And hills burried lakes of the caps, from runoff
and lagoons shallow of the ocean.
Each pathway traveled by them
Spread their journies
Through swift hooks and quick nets




Lynn Emanuel

Frying Trout While Drunk 

Mother is drinking to forget a man.
Padding batter over cleaned trout,
shortly after it had been beheaded and de-scaled.
Seasoned in lime and cajun fragrences
It would soon be on our plate
And the expression she gave was almost happy
underneath her pain.



Carolyn Forché

The Colonel

Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. Listening the waves of the water push this boat forward.
Our bodies lie everywhere, some alive, some dead, We just piled in and where shackled to a life forced into inhumane
labor. How human were really? As they say, we're animals. So why couldn't I break free to escape? The Colonel was vicious.
 




Ai

Respect, 1967

The porch light isn’t even on
when I come home, ready to fight.
She'd ffallen asleep in bed,
Me I search the kitchen for my dinner.
And der weren't none,
I searched my bedroom for her,
snatched her up and made her
do what I want.
I was angry not at her,
But at my father's anger that brewed inside of me,
that I constantly needed to take it out on somebody.




Louise Glück

Mock Orange

It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.
Like light bulbs in Korea
Or Billboard in New York,
It lighted nature like a night during Christmas
with the Irish green grass as their backdrop.




Wendell Berry

The Vacation

I was edged in the pictures you never saw me in,
On water, On boats
These pictures detailed my trips
should I have felt embarrassed that
nobody still would acknowledge me
as the man behind the poloiroid.



Charles Wright

Clear Night

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Filled with stars--the constellations,
Of the universe in rotation.
Clear night, how cool out?
We can still see our breathe,
Even after school lets out.







John Berryman

Dream Song #14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
If they are good to us, we go with it--no shade.
But when boredom strikes all on day,
Is it awful to tell them the truth,
all in one way,
That life is unfulfilling  and friends are overrated,
I could reevaluate my life, but the results are uncanning.







Jehanne Dubrow

Nonessential Equipment

My Deb Doll stayed behind,
and so did my Polly backback
Everything childlike felt unncessesary to pack now.
I everything a once over glance,
to make sure everything I was leaving,
couldn't be worth saving.
I grabbed for a small pink comb--
it had been one of my oldest,
and stuffed it deep into my pocket.



Andrew Hudgins

Day Job and Night Job
After my night job, I sat in class
Letting one eye roll back inside my head,
dosing off still trying to obtain my lesson.
Work and school. Both were hard,
but I got through it
until now, this day that I'd wish never happenened.





Gary Gildner

First Practice

After the doctor checked to see
we weren’t ruptured, we still lie alive.
After being hit by a tractor trailer,
We'd escaped with our live.
Like, a movie or a play,
I felt the drama play out here
while I staedily tried not to bleed out.





Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
And the scar, still on her back from a tantrum
her last large cat had.
She'd tamed them still.




Edward Hirsch

The Skokie Theater


Hormones raged in the beack of the Skokie Theater
Stil not finished in construction, we snuck off there
A day without our parents, we say
Grabbing each other foreighn parts, our genitals rubbed together
and sweated like a dog in heat, after we struggled to
take off our clothing.







Richard Hugo

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg

You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
on my neck and my colar bone
Your warm saliva on my skin, is like warm necture
and I heated up like those warm summer days,
Slow but surely.








David Bottoms

Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride
to the dump in carloads
setting up traps and targets
rats there were too many of them
running free, full off our leftovers.
We shoot first, and worry later.
Each moving black target,
was bound to say "see you later"
One day we shot a kitten by mistake
Chasing the same prey we'd fail to execute.






Climbing the Streets of Worcester, Mass.

Joy Harjo

Houses lean forward with their hands
on thin hips.
Trying to stand up on foundation
So they don't slop down a hill.
They stand mighty and tall.
Posing for another to house The people of Worcester.

Frank O’Hara The Day Lady Died

It is 3:40ish, in the middle of night
and I watch My Wife & kids
one eye open, other eye forced closed by my pillow
I toss and turn amd return to bed,
reawaken by Spongebob's obnoxious antics.
at 9:15 my alarm awakens me
for the sun has finally arrived in my window
and in 45 minutes, I would have class again.

My life became a moving multi-tasked vehicle
or a brisk walk onto campus in the wrong clothes
for the wrong weather and finding out what I'll have
to remove and add before 11

Billy Collins Japan

I say it for the creased wind
I say it to the still leaves
under the Mongolian trees.
I say it for the aurora skies
In emptiness it still fills all eyes.
I say it to dreams in bubbles
of thinking.
To dead end streets
and the tallest city buildings
i hear the bell ringing
Do you?

Sharon Olds The Promise

after love, drifting back

and forth across the border of consciousness, 

I held your hand and tried terribly to sense your

weakened pulse.  You were here but your mind

had already sailed away,

Your spirit was called away by Him.

I searched your heart to see if I was still there

Did we part? here. Before death, and after breath.

You still breathe here, tubes in your neck and chest.

I wonder who was there, a soul still trying to live

a part from you.

Myself was left in that state after you.

Turns out, I we didnt part at death

we parted at sickness

and my spirit was left distant

from my heart.

I wish I died.

Elizabeth Bishop One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master
Be weak and embrace stupidity
and the possibility that you'll have nothing
would be more so real than act.
You may not always loose,
someone may take.
But remember this before you get discouraged
Don't let the finding of this art
become your biggest lost.

Draft 3

Do you wanna play, Do you wanna play
My old friend
I'd came out behind the walls
and scared you yet again.
Slay dragons and Jamielynn
I killed a black bird
12 and one ways
to see you in my daze
An adventure, i'd always replay.

James Wright Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

Gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,

School bells blare and Shamble's Elementary lets out.

Trees brace for winds and nature  hardens 

beginning to cocoon itself.

Mr. Mihn closes shop early

and the sun sets soon after.

Bidding the day adieu.

Children walked their dogs and

parents waited on porches,

Light on.

It began a new routine

a keener eye, a new season. 

 

Sylvia Plath Daddy

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
I was born hated, like you.
To be a Jew, the world must wonder
Its like being hunted down
and forced to taint your aura.
To be led to believe that I couldn't exist
in this prized life, you brought me in.
JEW! they shout.
I called out for you.
You. no where to be found.
Arms grabbed, hands bound
stuffed into a cart filled with people like me.
JEW! one day scared to be me wondering
where was they're Daddy.

Richard Wilbur The Pardon

Well, I was ten and very much afraid.

That day he fell asleep there,

on the pavement and never awake.

I saw him there again, the next day,

My dad did too, but didn't say a thing. 

He left it up to me to figure it out on my own.

He stopped in front of me, gave me gloves

and 2 bags, told me to take my dog to the "can"

I asked what he had done

But was scolded and told to do what needed to be done!

My friend I never wanted to loose and

I put him to death, and it was only later I knew

That my dog killed over, and I couldn't do anything else.