Famous Chris Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Chris poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous chris poems. These examples illustrate what a famous chris poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...My grandmother’s teeth stare at her
from a mason jar on the nightstand.
The radio turns itself on,
sunlight crawls through the window,
and she thinks she feels her bright blue eyes
rolling out her head.
She’s certain her blood has turned to dirt,
that beetles haunt the dark hollow of her bones.
The clock on the kitchen wall is missing its...Read more of this...
by
Tusa, Chris
...ur park bench protest near the Royal Free
At sixty I need a fire and slippers, -4 outside just isn’t me.
Sorry, Chris Torrance, I can’t make your Welsh eyrie
Just spelling Gymmercher Isaf Pontneathvaughan quite fazes me.
Sorry, Seamus Famous, your hide away in Dublin Bay
No doubt is bloody grand but I can’t face the journey to a far off foreign land.
Sorry James Kirkup, your Andorran niche
Is just too complicated for me to ever reach.
Apologies e...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...Africans in the hold fold themselves
to make room for hope. In the afternoon’s
ferocity, tar, grouting the planks like the glue
of family, melts to the run of a child’s licorice stick.
Wet decks crack, testing the wood’s mettle.
Distilled from evaporating brine, salt
dusts the floor, tickling with the measure
into time and the thirst tr...Read more of this...
by
Abani, Chris
...e
Of the million watt
Yorkshire Electricity
Tower of Steel for
The new museum
‘Guns before butter’
And I wonder,
Christian Visionary Poet
Or Regional Romantic
Is there any longer
A place in this city
For me?
7
By Kirkgate Market
Alone at night
I wandered
The Parish Church’s
Stone lit by a
Hundred bulbs but
Its graveyard
Shifted aside.
Where are the banked
Stones of the dead?
Behind screens they raised
Their bones and counted
Their skulls a...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...there are times
when you should listen
to the world
I think
like
for instance
the time a meteorite came
through the roof and
through the ceiling and
landed on my desk
in the middle of
the papers and things
undone
to say it
smouldered would be
to become poetic
but it did
smoulder
and I was sitting there
at the time
about to pick up my pen
then I w...Read more of this...
by
Mansell, Chris
...less TV.Miss Brearly could say that I have to write script and stop printing. (I'm better at printing.)Chris could decide to stop being friends with me.The world could maybe come to an end on next Tuesday.The ceiling could maybe come crashing on my head.I maybe could run out of things for me to worry about.And then I'd have to do my homework instead....Read more of this...
by
Viorst, Judith
...Maybe it’s Emphysema, a shiny black jewel of phlegm
humming like a clump of bees in my chest.
Perhaps a tumor crawling in the crook of my armpit,
a blood clot opening like a tiny red flower in my brain.
Maybe it’s too early to show up on an X-ray,
a kind of cancerous seed planted deep
in my intestine, something like Leukemia’s ghost
haunting...Read more of this...
by
Tusa, Chris
...She looks rather pathetic, really,
leaning against the black air,
the three mangled fingers of her left hand
clutching a yellow purse,
her right arm raised over her head
as if to shield herself
from the silver shower of stars
raining down upon her.
Her mouth is a crack
growing beneath her nose.
Two dimples open like holes
in her cheeks. A pink...Read more of this...
by
Tusa, Chris
...ly death
We somehow took the blame for: her reach from the beyond.
Still troubles us, the only ones to mourn you, Chris,
Your corn-gold hair splayed like a longship’s mast
You sailed to Valhalla through a sea of passing loves,
The deceits of married men who took your beauty
For a moment’s gift then cast you with your seven year old son adrift.
The sun has gone but birdsong blunders on
As I take courage from the gone, the waving grass,
The sculptured pylons o...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...Marie Laveau, a colored woman who eventually became
known as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, often used
her knowledge of Voodoo to manipulate and acquire power.
--Enigma
In one quick lick I waved my mojo hand,
made the Mississippi’s muddy spine
run crooked as a crow’s foot,
scared politicians into my pocket
with lizard tongues and buzzard bones,
c...Read more of this...
by
Tusa, Chris
...When our moggy brings in moths, she squeaks
through the kitchen, tips between her teeth,
and scoots upstairs to scuff under the bed.
If we find these blow-ins they’re usually dead
though a number dust the floor with tatty wings
or unfurl from sheets like pencil shavings,
furry woodcuts, a lime-green surprise –
still tremulous, and slight enough to f...Read more of this...
by
Jones, Chris
...His name has been ghosted over the fence,
leaving an alias, burn, prison clothes.
I'm half the man, he says, not my sentence,
waiting on time that other people chose.
From their windows men sing out numbers, names,
hands to the grille light for the come-back call,
but words get lost, change allegiance, and blame's
out of their mouths, love's over...Read more of this...
by
Jones, Chris
...after Sue Owen
Born from flour anointed with oil,
from a roux dark and mean as a horse’s breath,
you remind me of some strange, mystical stew
spawned from a muddy version of Macbeth.
Only someone’s replaced the spells with spices,
the witches with a Cajun chef.
Maybe you’re a recipe torn from Satan’s Cookbook,
a kind of dumb-downed devil’s b...Read more of this...
by
Tusa, Chris
...after Susan Thomas
Truth is, my life was no fairytale,
that afternoon, I lay, a smiling corpse
under a glass sky, a rotten apple
lodged in my throat like a black lump
of cancer, your sloppy kiss dying on my lips.
Did you really believe a kiss could cure
the poison galloping through my veins,
as you stood there, with your ugly white horse,
the voic...Read more of this...
by
Tusa, Chris
...the population controller
slips into disguise
his charming suit
his veil of words
conceals his gaze
he has laid out the fields
and filled them with blossoms
and counted the money jars
in his SimCity slim city
androgyn sharp
bodies are worry perfect
slicked back souped up
cool as drones
the neutered ones
will dance for one another
in the pages of glib
they...Read more of this...
by
Mansell, Chris
...We sat in the belly of the aeroplane
and held out for sirens to swerve across the grass;
men with cutting gear and masks. No-one came.
On a back seat, Mr. Phillips bandied jokes to pass
the time; the dark air cooling our arms
and scents like burrs stitched in hair, clothes.
In the distance we swore we heard alarms
before HQ radioed the fire...Read more of this...
by
Jones, Chris
...on someone else's place
it seems to him the land
slings distance way out
the dirt is dead and
the sky seems twisted
the beat of the stones is wrong
he doesn't know how to say it
there are no words no opportunity
and anyway
what would you say
that you're a stranger
and this doesn't say it at all
he walks with his weapon through the town
and from time to ti...Read more of this...
by
Mansell, Chris
...we are succulents
our cool jade arms open
over clean tables our fine bone
china minds pull the strings
of our tongues together we plait
our thoughts with the television
back through the aerials and
transmission towers prodding
through the literal fog
the mechanics of which distance
does not startle us or the ears
pretend to hear the telephone
the page also...Read more of this...
by
Mansell, Chris
...She is effulgent in the dark halls of town.
She is listening but they are hearing.
Her skin is blistering and sharp with sparks.
She is listening for the crick of grass underfoot.
They are hearing her heavy paces.
She is straining to feel the hum of the air.
They are hearing her voice wailing
like a warrigal. She is being
quie...Read more of this...
by
Mansell, Chris
...I caught rumours of some internal hearing
then you appeared with tears squeezing your eyes,
hands scrunched up like a child's, rice paper skin.
That work mates complained was a big surprise
as you were office sunshine, shafted no-one,
and turned your quick mind to the broadest cause.
But there you were, a whisper finished…gone,
scooping reams of da...Read more of this...
by
Jones, Chris
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