A Panoply of Poetic Brevity [by Dickinson, Thoreau, Crane, Ammons, Hass, Pinsky, Nemerov, Kawin, and Ossip]

Haiku

  Napped half the day;
no one   
    punished me!

-- Issa (trans. Robert Hass)

   All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
      killing mosquitoes.

-- Issa (trans. Robert Hass)

 

My Life Has Been the Poem I Would Have Writ

My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.

Henry David Thoreau

*

We lose — because we win —
Gamblers — recollecting which
Toss their dice again!

-- Emily Dickinson

I Walked in a Desert

I walked in a desert.
And I cried,
"Ah, God, take me from this place!"
A voice said, "It is no desert."
I cried, "Well, But --
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon."
A voice said, "It is no desert."

-- Stephen Crane

 

The Span of Life

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.

-- Robert Frost

 

A Life

 Innocence?
In a sense.
In no sense!

Was that it? 
Was that it?
Was that it?

That was it.

-- Howard Nemerov

 

Their Sex Life

One Failure on
Top of another.

-- A. R. Ammons

Coward

Bravery runs in my family.

-- A. R. Ammons

 

I Had Thought Things Were Going Along Well

But I was mistaken.

-- John Ashbery

 

ABC

Any body can die, evidently. Few
Go happily, irradiating joy,

Knowledge, love. Many
Need oblivion, painkillers,
Quickest respite.

Sweet time unafflicted,
Various world:

X=your zenith.

— Robert Pinsky

 

Function

You say I but
you’re a function
of your body.
It stops, you do.

--Bruce Kawin

 

Marriage

So much for the fighting
                                             and the sex,
I want to be alone
with you in the next room.

-- Kathleen Ossip

Comments

[Joel Weiner]

RANDOM FORS
Eat for sustenance
Drink for pleasure
Think for reason
Love for harmony
Breathe for life
Pray for eternity
Fornicate for fun
Time for a change

[Bob Holman]

Relationship

In order to save the relationship
We will never see each other again

[Victor Fleming]

prayers I'd not uttered
petitions I'd not pursued
then snow in the night

a fresh white blanket
on the mountainside at dawn
concealing the dew

Victor Fleming

[Daniel Brown]

Death

Dost to dust.

[Robert Pinsky]

Applause-- and can't resist adding Thom Gunn's "Jamesian":

Their relationship consisted
In discussing if it existed.

[Peter Frank]

SPRING

Spring
suddenly burst;
screen doors

[Judy Durrant]

The state
of semi-involuntary
voidable
involvement.

Judy Durrant

[M. C. Rush]

What will will
more often than
what will wills.