As I was out walking on a corner one day, I spied an old hobo, in a doorway he lay. His face was all grounded in the cold sidewalk floor And I guess he'd been there for the whole night or more. Only a hobo, but one more is gone Leavin' nobody to sing his sad song Leavin' nobody to carry him home Only a hobo, but one more is gone A blanket of newspaper covered his head, As the curb was his pillow, the street was his bed. One look at his face showed the hard road he'd come And a fistful of coins showed the money he bummed. Only a hobo, but one more is gone Leavin' nobody to sing his sad song Leavin' nobody to carry him home Only a hobo, but one more is gone Does it take much of a man to see his whole life go down, To look up on the world from a hole in the ground, To wait for your future like a horse that's gone lame, To lie in the gutter and die with no name? Only a hobo, but one more is gone Leavin' nobody to sing his sad song Leavin' nobody to carry him home Only a hobo, but one more is gone
Not strictly poetry but... Dear God, hope you get the letter and I pray you can make it better down here I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer But all the people that you made in your image See them starving on their feet 'Cause they don't get enough to eat from God I can't believe in you Dear God, sorry to disturb you but I feel that I should be heard loud and clear We all need a big reduction in amount of tears And all the people that you made in your image See them fighting in the street 'Cause they can't make opinions meet about God I can't believe in you Did you make disease and the diamond blue? Did you make mankind after we made you? And the Devil too! Dear God don't know if you noticed but Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book And us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look And all the people that you made in your image Still believing that junk is true Well I know it ain't, and so do you I can't believe in I don't believe I won't believe in heaven or hell No saints, no sinners, no devil as well No pearly gates, no thorny crown You're always letting us humans down The wars you bring, the babes you drown Those lost at sea and never found And it's the same the whole world 'round The hurt I see helps to compound The Father, Son and Holy Ghost Is just somebody's unholy hoax And if you're up there you'll perceive That my heart's here upon my sleeve If there's one thing I don't believe in It's you
I used to like going to City, But owners a right pair of titties, The old man is ailing, The son's motto is "failing" Now I'll leave it to someone more witty.
Far from crazy pavements The taste of silver spoons A clinical arrangement On a dirty afternoon Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud Are rendered obsolete The legal term is null and void In the case of Beasley Street In the cheap seats where murder breeds Somebody is out of breath Sleep is a luxury they don't need A sneak preview of death Belladonna is your flower Manslaughter your meat Spend a year in a couple of hours On the edge of Beasley Street Where the action isn't That's where it is State your position Vacancies exist In an X-certificate exercise Ex-servicemen excrete Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies In a box on Beasley Street From the boarding houses and the bedsits Full of accidents and fleas Somebody gets it Where the missing persons freeze Wearing dead men's overcoats You can't see their feet A riff joint shuts opens up Right down on Beasley Street Cars collide, colors clash Disaster movie stuff For a man with a Fu Manchu mustache Revenge is not enough There's a dead canary on a swivel seat There's a rainbow in the road Meanwhile on Beasley Street Silence is the code Hot beneath the collar An inspector calls Where the perishing stink of squalor Impregnates the walls The rats have all got rickets They spit through broken teeth The name of the game is not cricket Caught out on Beasley Street The hipster and his hired hat Drive a borrowed car Yellow socks and a pink cravat Nothing la-di-dah OAP, mother to be Watch the three-piece suite When ****-stoppered drains And crocodile skis Are seen on Beasley Street The kingdom of the blind A one-eyed man is king Beauty problems are redefined The doorbells do not ring A light bulb bursts like a blister The only form of heat Here a fellow sells his sister Down the river on Beasley Street The boys are on the wagon The girls are on the shelf Their common problem is That they're not someone else The dirt blows out The dust blows in You can't keep it neat It's a fully furnished dustbin Sixteen Beasley Street Vince the aging savage Betrays no kind of life But the smell of yesterday's cabbage And the ghost of last year's wife Through a constant haze Of deodorant sprays He says retreat Alsatians dog the dirty days Down the middle of Beasley Street People turn to poison Quick as lager turns to piss Sweethearts are physically sick Every time they kiss It's a sociologist's paradise Each day repeats On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy Beastly Beasley Street Eyes dead as vicious fish Look around for laughs If I could have just one wish I would be a photograph On a permanent Monday morning Get lost or fall asleep When the yellow cats are yawning Around the back of Beasley Street
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
If I die in a war zone, Box me up & send Me Home, Put My Medals on My Chest, Tell My Mum I did My Best, Tell My Dad not to Bow, He won’t get tension from Me now, Tell My Brother to study perfectly, Keys of My Car will be His permanently, Tell My Sister not to be upset, Her Brother will not Rise after this Sunset, Tell My Love not to Cry… Because I am a soldier born to die....
https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/rime-ancient-mariner It's a long bastard but the rhyme of the ancient mariner is a beast.
This lady is taking a fist Her bum hole is up to the wrist If you asked me to state My preferred sexual fate This wouldn't be top of my list Limerick Larry
More verse than poem but a good shout for a funeral. Death Is Nothing At All Death is nothing at all I have only slipped away into the next room I am I and you are you Whatever we were to each other That we are still Call me by my old familiar name Speak to me in the easy way you always used Put no difference into your tone Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow Laugh as we always laughed At the little jokes we always enjoyed together Play, smile, think of me, pray for me Let my name be ever the household word that it always was Let it be spoken without effort Without the ghost of a shadow in it Life means all that it ever meant It is the same as it ever was There is absolute unbroken continuity What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind Because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you for an interval Somewhere very near Just around the corner All is well. Nothing is past; nothing is lost One brief moment and all will be as it was before How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again! Canon Henry Scott-Holland