theshortpoems
theshortpoems
Short Poems
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theshortpoems · 5 years ago
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“Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me.
Emily Dickinson, Hope is the thing with feathers (314) 
Featured on Dear Hank & John Episode 30 - Ending the Hiaaeetus!   
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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He tells her that the Earth is flat— He knows the facts, and that is that. In altercations fierce and long She tries her best to prove him wrong. But he has learned to argue well. He calls her arguments unsound And often asks her not to yell. She cannot win. He stands his ground. The planet goes on being round.
Wendy Cope, He Tells Her
Featured on Dear Hank & John Episode  029 - Barbershop Genghis
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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"Faith" is a fine invention For Gentlemen who see! But microscopes are prudent In an Emergency!
Emily Dickinson, 202
Featured on Dear Hank & John Episode  028 - John's Top Ten Probable Apocalypse List
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky; The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,        For thou must die. Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye; Thy root is ever in its grave,        And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie; My music shows ye have your closes,        And all must die. Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like season’d timber, never gives; But though the whole world turn to coal,        Then chiefly lives.
George Herbert, Virtue
Featured on Dear Hank & John Episode  027 - Giving Gifts Without Breaking the Bank
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee , has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty, how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only with spring)
E.E. Cummings, O Sweet Spontaneous 
Featured in Dear Hank & John Episode  026 - Should I Make Out With My Roommate?
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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By the time you swear you’re his, Shivering and sighing, And he vows his passion is Infinite, undying — Lady, make a note of this: One of you is lying.
Dorothy Parker, Unfortunate Coincidence
Featured in Dear Hank & John Episode  025 - LIVE IN NEW YORK it's NARS MEWS!
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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I, too, dislike it.   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in   it, after all, a place for the genuine.
Marianne Moore, Poetry. 
Featured on Dear Hank & John Episode  024 - The Great Finger Licking Debate
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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My Chest of Books divide among my friends.
John Keats, The Last Will and Testament of John Keats
Featured on Dear Hank & John Episode  023 - OH MY GOD IT'S BURNING
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any—lifted from the no of all nothing—human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
E.E. Cummings, I Thank You God For Most This Amazing
Featured on Dear Hank & John Episode  022 - Post-Menopausal Cousin Marriage
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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You were the one for skylights. I opposed Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed, Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling, The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling. Under there, it was all hutch and hatch. The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch. But when the slates came off, extravagant Sky entered and held surprise wide open. For days I felt like an inhabitant Of that house where the man sick of the palsy Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven, Was healed, took up his bed and walked away.
Seamus Heaney, The Skylight
Featured in Dear Hank & John Episode  021 - Who Am I?
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so, Having no heart to put aside the theft And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be, Long fallen wide. You can see how it was: Look at the pictures and the cutlery. The music in the piano stool. That vase.
Philip Larkin, Home is so Sad
Featured in Dear Hank & John Episode  020 - This Episode Contains Puke
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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All my life so far I have been afraid Of cactus, Spiders Rattlesnakes. The tall fourteen year old boy who led me through the desert whispered, “Come over this way.” Picking my steps carefully over an earth strangely familiar, I found four small holes, large enough for a root that might have been torn out or a black snake hole in Ohio, that I hated. “What is it?” I said. “Some cute prairie dog or an abandoned post hole maybe?” “No,” he said. “She’s down there with her children. She doesn’t hate you, she’s not afraid. She’s probably asleep, she’s probably keeping warm with something I don’t know about. And all I know is sometimes in sunlight, two brown legs reach out. It is hard to get a look at her face, even in the museum she turns away. I don’t know where she’s looking.” “I have lived all my life in terror of a tarantula, and yet I have never even seen a tarantula turn her face away from me.” “That’s alright,” said the boy. “Maybe she’s never seen you either.”
James Wright, Discoveries in Arizona
Featured in Dear Hank & John Episode  019 - Should I Abandon My Stuffed Animal?
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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Candy Is dandy, But Liquor Is quicker
Ogden Nash, Candy is Dandy
Featured in Dear Hank & John Episode  018 - Coming to Terms with your Nerdiness
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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Woke up early this morning and from my bed looked far across the Strait to see a small boat moving through the choppy water, a single running light on. Remembered my friend who used to shout his dead wife’s name from hilltops around Perugia. Who set a plate for her at his simple table long after she was gone. And opened the windows so she could have fresh air. Such display I found embarrassing. So did his other friends. I couldn’t see it. Not until this morning.
Raymond Carver, Grief
Featured in Dear Hank & John Episode  018 - Coming to Terms with your Nerdiness
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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When Odysseus finally does get home he is understandably upset about the suitors, who have been mooching off his wife for twenty years, drinking his wine, eating his mutton, etc. In a similar situation today he would seek legal counsel. But those were different times. With the help of his son Telemachus he slaughters roughly one hundred and ten suitors and quite a number of young ladies, although in view of their behavior I use the term loosely. Rivers of blood course across the palace floor. I too have come home in a bad mood. Yesterday, for instance, after the department meeting, when I ended up losing my choice parking spot behind the library to the new provost. I slammed the door. I threw down my book bag in this particular way I have perfected over the years that lets my wife understand the contempt I have for my enemies, which is prodigious. And then with great skill she built a gin and tonic that would have pleased the very gods, and with epic patience she listened as I told her of my wrath, and of what I intended to do to so-and-so, and also to what’s-his-name. And then there was another gin and tonic and presently my wrath abated and was forgotten, and peace came to reign once more in the great halls and courtyards of my house.
George Bilgere, The Return of  Odysseus
Featured in Dear Hank & John Episode  017 - Meeting Taylor Swift('s parents)
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next     summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting. We laughed at the hollyhocks together and then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing. I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten     years. The man who asked for it was shabby and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold. Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg. Forgive me. I was clumsy, and I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
Kenneth Koch,  Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
Featured on Dear Hank & John Episode  016 - Handling Awful Roommates
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theshortpoems · 8 years ago
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I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
William Carlos Williams, This is Just to Say
Featured on Dear Hank and John Episode  015 - Get That In Your Mouth!
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