Simple English Poetry

1
 1. A Poison Tree
William Blake
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 waterd it in fears
Night & 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 outstretchd beneath the tree.
2. A Bird Came Down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I
thought;
He stirred his velvet head
Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.
2
 3.

4. Love Apart 4. This Is Just to Say

Rhonda L. Luther William Carlos Williams

Even though we are miles apart I have eaten

You are never far from my heart the plums
I loved you then that were in
I love you now the icebox
It's always when and
Never how and which
Take me back to yesterday you were probably
All the wonderful things you had to say saving
I loved you then for breakfast
I love you now
It's always when Forgive me
And never how they were delicious
I see your eyes so sweet
I feel you near and so cold
Although you're not
Really here

3
5. Macavity: The Mystery Cat

T.S. Eliot
Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw—
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,

He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air—
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Macavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;

You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,

For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square—
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)

And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,

4
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,

Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—
But it's useless to investigate—Macavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
It must have been Macavity!'—but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumb;
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,

There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN'T THERE !
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

5
6. Little Tree
e.e. cummings
Tree
little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful.
we'll dance and sing
'Noel Noel'

6
7. Fire and Ice 8. Buffalo Bill
Robert Frost e.e. cummings
Some say the world will end in fire, Buffalo Bill's
Some say in ice. defunct
From what I've tasted of desire who used to
I hold with those who favor fire. ride a watersmooth-silver
But if it had to perish twice, stallion
I think I know enough of hate and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons
To say that for destruction ice justlikethat
Is also great Jesus
And would suffice. he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death

9. Soldier Daddy

Gina M. Makowsky

To you I may be very small I watch my mom and see her cry
Or think I don't know much at all I already know but still ask why?
I've learned to grow up rather fast Her heart is hurting yet she tries to smile
With so much future and not much past And we hold each other for a little while

I'm just two years old but often sad I'm still young yet very wise
I want so much to hug my dad I have my fun but realize
He's protecting us from far away My soldier daddy is brave and strong
His life on the line everyday I pray his deployment won't be long

7
10. Free Union
André Breton

My wife with the hair of a wood fire

With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with her rosette mouth and a bouquet of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth
With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass
My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host
With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes
With the tongue of an unbelievable stone
My wife with her eyelashes in the strokes of a child's writing
With eyebrows from the edge of a swallow's nest
My wife with brows of slates on a hothouse roof
And with steam on the windowpanes
My wife with shoulders of champagne
And of a fountain with dolphin heads beneath the ice
My wife with wrists of matches
My wife with fingers of luck and the ace of hearts
With fingers of mown hay
My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut
And of Midsummer Night
Of privet and of an angelfish nest
With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks
And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill
My wife with legs of flares
With the movements of clockwork and despair
My wife with calves of eldertree pith
My wife with feet of initials
With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking
My wife with a neck of unpearled barley
My wife with a throat of the valley of gold
Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent
With breasts of night
My wife with her undersea molehill breasts 
My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible
With breasts of the spectre of the rose beneath the dew
My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days
With the belly of a gigantic claw
My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically
With a back of quicksilver
With a back of light
With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk
And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking

8
My wife with hips of a skiff
With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers
And of shafts of white peacock plumes
Of an insensible pendulum
My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos
My wife with buttocks of swans' backs
My wife with buttocks of spring
With the sex of an iris
My wife with the sex of placer and platypus
My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat
My wife with a sex of mirror
My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle
My wife with savanna eyes
My wife with eyes of water to be drunk in prison
My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe
My wife with eyes of water-level air-level earth and fire

11. Now Ramazan is come, no wine must flow,

Omar Khayyam

Now Ramazan is come, no wine must flow,

Our simple pastimes we must now forego,
The wine we have in store we must not drink,
Nor on our mistresses one kiss bestow.

12. Lain in Nature -- so suffice us 13. Train Sandwiches

Marissa Faries
Emily Dickinson
Crispiest lettuce,
Lain in Nature -- so suffice us Chewy cheese between soft loafs,
The enchantless Pod This sandwich truly
When we advertise existence Of utmost deliciousness,
For the missing Seed -- As we travel through the trees.
Maddest Heart that God created
Cannot move a sod
Pasted by the simple summer
On the Longed for Dead

9
 14. Daddy I may be a bit of a Jew.

Sylvia Plath I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.   
You do not do, you do not do    And your neat mustache
Any more, black shoe And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
In which I have lived like a foot    Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——
For thirty years, poor and white,   
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.   
Daddy, I have had to kill you.    Every woman adores a Fascist,   
You died before I had time—— The boot in the face, the brute   
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,    Brute heart of a brute like you.
Ghastly statue with one gray toe   
Big as a Frisco seal You stand at the blackboard, daddy,   
In the picture I have of you,
And a head in the freakish Atlantic    A cleft in your chin instead of your foot   
Where it pours bean green over blue    But no less a devil for that, no not   
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.    Any less the black man who
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du. Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.   
In the German tongue, in the Polish town    At twenty I tried to die
Scraped flat by the roller And get back, back, back to you.
Of wars, wars, wars. I thought even the bones would do.
But the name of the town is common.   
My Polack friend But they pulled me out of the sack,   
And they stuck me together with glue.   
Says there are a dozen or two.    And then I knew what to do.
So I never could tell where you    I made a model of you,
Put your foot, your root, A man in black with a Meinkampf look
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw. And a love of the rack and the screw.   
And I said I do, I do.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.    So daddy, I’m finally through.
Ich, ich, ich, ich, The black telephone’s off at the root,   
I could hardly speak. The voices just can’t worm through.
I thought every German was you.   
And the language obscene If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you   
An engine, an engine And drank my blood for a year,
Chuffing me off like a Jew. Seven years, if you want to know.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.    Daddy, you can lie back now.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew. There’s a stake in your fat black heart   
And the villagers never liked you.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna    They are dancing and stamping on you.   
Are not very pure or true. They always knew it was you.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck    Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

10
15. Seasons
Robynne Nataly La Rosa
Seasons come and go,
Each year it's the same.
If only people changed like the seasons.
Winter, Summer, Autumn, Spring;
Each one holds a secret,
It's own special magic.
Winter holds a promise that there is
Life after Death.
Spring ignites a spark; a sliver of
Hope and a pinch of Joy for healing.
Autumn holds the key to
Eternity,
And Summer is the Epicenter of
The Magic.
Summer is the result; the After-life;
It is Rebirth.
Seasons change, and people do too,
But it's a pity - a shame - that people
Don't change the same way.
People are too unpredictable; we change
Our minds too many times, we change
Our Destinies every day.
Seasons don't.
Seasons accept their constant cycle;
Their Natural Pattern.
People will never be like the Seasons.
I guess that's what makes us all
Unique.
In this way
We are Designed -
Crafted, Molded.
Seasons harbour a Secret;
It's own special Magic.
We too, are our own special Magic.
Winter promises Life after Death,
People are promised Happiness after
Depression.
Spring ignites a spark of Joy for Healing,
People are promised Joy and Healing after
Pain
And Suffering.
Autumn holds the key to Eternity,
People are promised Eternity in the
Promised Land.
Summer is the Epicenter; the After-life,
And people are the Epicenters of their own
lives.
We are our own Masters of Catastrophe.
People are Reborn in Faith.
Looking at it now, maybe we are much like
The Seasons.
We are predictable in our unpredictability.
This is our prized Possession.
This is our kind of Magic.
People have seasons, people are seasons.
Winter is our Darker side,
Spring is our Healing,
Summer, our Euphorical - blissful side,
Autumn, our Procrastination, our Changing,
Our Learning.
Just like the Seasons, we change;
We mold our Futures and become who we
are meant
To be;
We become part of a Cycle.
11
16. Matroyshka Doll
Izza
Right at the corner of the street
An antique store lights it bulb
I went it
My eyes stuck at the shiny matroyshka doll

The owner stood up

And gave me the doll

The 1st doll look so happy

There is sparkle in its eyes and the smile
shines as bright as the star who lights up the
darkness of the night

I open the 2nd doll

It smiles without any sparkle on its eyes
It smiles as if it has no soul

I open the 3rd doll

It has no expression
It doesn't look happy or sad either

As my head is spinning around

I look and open the 4th doll
With the sad look on its face
I start to realize that something is off

Then I open the last one

And I feel like I'm watching myself

A broken pieces doll

Deep in my heart
I feel like it is me

I smile as bright as the sun like the first doll

While I'm actually broken inside like the last
doll

12
17. Trees

Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

13