Search Categories - Any -25 Lines or FewerCanadaPre 21st Century21st Century Grade levels - Any -Grades 7-9 / Sec. 1-3Grades 10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1 Sort by RandomNewestMost popularA -> ZZ -> A Apply Lord (George Gordon) Byron She Walks in Beauty She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright William Butler Yeats When You Are Old When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look William Ernest Henley Invictus Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be Lucille Clifton forgiving my father it is friday. we have come to the paying of the bills. all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost, asking for more time but today is payday, payday old man; my mother’s hand opens in her early grave Leigh Hunt Rondeau Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Lucille Clifton won't you celebrate with me won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up Jane Mead From World of Made and Unmade In my dream my mother comes with me. We are in the meadows we call The Flats, walking the dogs. Walk straight past the water trough, she says, do not engage the moss. Souvankham Thammavongsa Gayatri I have a picture of us when we are seven but we aren’t in it. At the time it was taken we thought we were. We posed with our wide Jason Camlot Dear Death, Am I a praise poet or a blame poet? Today I am a blame poet. O Death, face it, existence doesn’t like you. You can’t sing. You can’t paint. Yusuf Saadi Spacetime We Twitter, Tinder, Tumblr through eternity. Loquacious text messages flit from fingertips, waves of data spill through our skulls. Every cm2 of oxygen overflowing Rhina P. Espaillat Bilingual/Bilingüe My father liked them separate, one there, one here (allá y aquí), as if aware that words might cut in two his daughter’s heart (el corazón) and lock the alien part William Shakespeare Blow, blow, thou winter wind Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude; Tomasz Rózycki 11. Headwinds When I began to write, I didn’t know each of my words would bit by bit remove things from the world and in return leave blank Carl Sandburg I Am the People, the Mob I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me? I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes. Sylvia Legris 4 Marked by Claws and Cloudburst... The calendar marred with birds and you are kik-kik-kik-kicking all the way into June. 180 days scratched with black X’s and crow’s feet: bird-of-two minds (goodandevil goodandevil); Wilfred Owen The Last Laugh ‘O Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died. Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed, The Bullets chirped — In vain! vain! vain! Raoul Fernandes An Online Friend Dies Somewhere Outside the Internet Freezes, goes blue screen, shuts down. Dead pixel, dark. Ghost echoes, lossy in the source code. Time zones away, people who have actually shaken hands with my online friend John Keats Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art — Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Rabindranath Tagore Gitanjali 35 Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into… Marjorie Pickthall When Winter Comes Rain at Muchalat, rain at Sooke, And rain, they say, from Yale to Skeena, And the skid-roads blind, and never a look Ralph Waldo Emerson Experience The lords of life, the lords of life, — I saw them pass, In their own guise, Ben Ladouceur Tractatus The sun gave our shoulder blades ulu-shaped burns, and the sun gives nothing to our sort I sleep now, and furiously Clouds excreted shadows on the shoreline, and there were no clouds Christian Bök From Chapter I Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism, disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks — impish Thomas Hardy Hap If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen Mama When the horse picked Mama up by the hair that time, was she scared? There is a photograph of her with this horse in the brown family album. She stands beside him, thin in the chilly wind Chantal Gibson How She Read Oh, how she read this. Girl Paul Muldoon The Loaf When I put my finger to the hole they’ve cut for a dimmer switch in a wall of plaster stiffened with horsehair it seems I’ve scratched a… Ian Williams Echolalia Once one gets what one wants one no longer wants it. One no longer wants what? Nicole Brossard Smooth Horizon of the Verb Love 1 an urban image from the eighties when we hung out at Chez Madame Arthur Lynn Crosbie Modestine We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James, who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes Harryette Mullen it's rank, it cranks you up it’s rank it cranks you up crash you’re fracked you suck shucks you’re wack you be all you cracked up to be dead on arrival overdosed on whatever excess of hate and love Susan Howe From Titian Air Vent A work of art is a world of signs, at least to the poet’s nursery bookshelf sheltered behind the artist’s ear. I recall each little motto howling its ins and outs to those of us who might as well be on the moon Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks of Rivers I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. Bernard Ferguson juxtaposition with seeds i thought you were gone / stupid bird / darling worms shifting in the mud / this time i am not so certain / is it kinship or are you gloating? / have i grown bitter with the bees / how they bring the blooms reliably? Natalie Shapero Not Horses What I adore is not horses, with their modern domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore is a bug that lives only one day, especially if it’s a terrible day, a day of train derailment or Gerard Manley Hopkins Pied Beauty Glory be to God for dappled things — For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim… Billy Collins Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide Ocean Vuong Deto(nation) There’s a joke that ends with — huh? It’s the bomb saying here is your father. Now here is your father inside your lungs. Look how lighter the earth is — afterward. Aphra Behn A Thousand Martyrs A thousand martyrs I have made, All sacrific’d to my desire; A thousand beauties have betray’d, Patricia Smith Hip-Hop Ghazal Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips, decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips. As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak, Language English