House Poems
The City Planners
by Margaret Atwood
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
......
Silence
by Marianne Moore
My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
......
After The Rebuilding
by Philip Booth
After the rebuilding was done, and
the wood stove finally installed, after
the ripping out of walls, tearing back to
its beams the house he'd lived in, frozen, for over
fifty years, he started morning up with the world's
most expensive kindling. Not just scraps of red oak from
the new florring, ends of clear birch from the kitchen trim, and
knots from the #2 pine, but odd-lot pieces of his old life:
window frames, clawed from his daughter's lost room,
his grandfather's coat peg, shelving his mother
......
Bells For John Whiteside's Daughter
by John Crowe Ransom
There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study Astonishes us all
Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond
The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
......
Scab Maids On Speed
by Maggie Estep
My first job was when I was about 15. I had met a girl named Hope who became my best friend. Hope and I were flunking math class so we became speed freaks. This honed our algebra skills and we quickly became whiz kids. For about 5 minutes. Then, our brains started to fry and we were just teenage speed freaks.
Then, we decided to to seek gainful employment.
We got hired on as part time maids at the Holiday Inn while a maid strike was happening. We were scab maids on speed and we were coming to clean your room.
We were subsequently fired for pilfering a Holiday Inn guest's quaalude stash which we did only because we never thought someone would have the nerve to call the front desk and say; THE MAIDS STOLE MY LUUDES MAN. But someone did - or so we surmised - because we were fired.
I supppose maybe we were fired because we never actually CLEANED but rather just turned on the vacuum so it SOUNDED like we were cleaning as we picked the pubic hairs off the sheets and out of the tub then passed out on the bed and caught up on the sleep we'd missed from being up all night speeding.
......
House of Summer
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
In a mass of blooms
sits a summer house all gold
on a sandy beach
Momentous waves each moment
of drama filled beauty days
Near the coral lane
adjoining bright reds and plums
beneath blues and cream
Orange and yellows in front
......
House in Yellow Daisies
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
The house in the yellow daisies,
is captivated by breezy graces,
near a meadow very green.
Bluebirds flutter by in summer,
scarlet berry bushes to plunder,
where nature is queen.
Gold stars flash all springtime,
when crickets call for nighttime,
......
The Lives I Have Known
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
It has been ages since the laughter died, which was many suns ago,
Soon swept away by fleeting time, like the brief giggle of a rainbow.
My vacant halls now are silent, and the flower garden is overgrown,
Effusing rich and cloying fragrance, lovely nature reclaiming its own.
The tree boughs are overhanging, the bushes begging to be pruned,
Like a piano that once made beautiful music, is begging to be tuned.
The fruit trees so long neglected, has left fruit rotting on the ground,
......
Particolored Sunroom
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
House of sun,
where the colors sing.
Sunroom blooms!
Inner bliss
and adventures in perfume,
at sunset or noon.
Spring air wafts,
warm through the window-
Peach rose prance!
......
Bouquet Day
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
glad morning bouquet
in many shades of sunshine
scented in its rays
a large one was picked
in the morning of summer
and the mansion smiled
no wind waltzing now
for it is quite wild indoors
......
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Conrad Potter Aiken (41 poems about House)
Conrad Aiken] (5 August 1889 – 17 August 1973 / Savannah, Georgia -
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Edna St. Vincent Millay (20 poems about House)
22 February 1892 – 19 October 1950 / Rockland / Maine / United States -
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