Epigram

A pithy, often witty, poem.

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.
 

"kitty". sixteen,5'1",white,prostitute.

ducking always the touch of must and shall,
whose slippery body is Death's littlest pal,

skilled in quick softness.   Unspontaneous.   cute.

the signal perfume of whose unrepute
focusses in the sweet slow animal
bottomless eyes importantly banal,

Kitty. a whore. Sixteen
                                  you corking brute
amused from time to...

Fore there neidfaerae naenig uuiurthit

Let the relentless fist
be kissed.

The salt cannot be cooked;
the past is overlooked.

Full once they nibble,
fleas quibble.

Teeth in a hyena’s face
always slide into place.

No donkey can cart
what weighs down your heart.

Outside a man is respected;
at home that man is neglected.

The strangers...

Leaf-keep, un-sibyl; if the soul
Has the weight of a swallow, what less
Has the weight of a sip? You equal
This riddle, unposed in your dish
As a hand at rest in a lap. Held to,
You hold back what can't be
Prevented, what's no...

         PRECEPT I.

In Things of moment, on thy self depend,
Nor trust too far thy Servant or thy Friend:
With private Views, thy Friend may promise fair,
And Servants very seldom prove sincere.

       PRECEPT II.
...

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

"Heaven bless the babe," they said.
"What queer books she must have read!"
(Love, by whom I was beguiled,
Grant I may not bear a child!)

"Little does she guess today
What the world may be," they say.
(Snow,...

1. THE PLAGIARIST   

Careless of his debts, he never credits   
submissions to the magazine he edits.   

2. THE TAXIDERMIST   

Her father's dead at last, the lout—   
but now he's all she writes about.   

3. THE ASSASSIN   

His verse means less to the world...

I know what my heart is like
      Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
      Left there by the tide,
      A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

The back roads I’ve traveled late   
at night, alone, a little drunk,   
wishing I were someone
on whom nothing is lost,

are the roads by day I take
to the car wash in Hammonton   
or to Blue Anchor’s
lawnmower repair shop
when the self-propel mechanism goes.

Fascinating how the...

And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A...

Misus and Mopsa hardly could agree,
Striving about superiority.
The text which says that man and wife are one,
Was the chief argument they stood upon. 
She held they both one woman should become,
He held both should...

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could...

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

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...

The rose of all the world is not for me.
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet—and breaks the heart.