by T. S. Eliot The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily, Such as
Read on »Poems
Brand New Ancients On Film
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 More about Kate Tempest
Read on »A Brave and Startling Truth – Maya Angelou
NY Times: Maya Angelou, Lyrical Witness of the Jim Crow South, Dies at 86 We, this people, on a small and lonely planet Traveling through casual space Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns To a destination where all signs tell us It is possible and imperative that we learn A brave and
Read on »‘Beasts of battle’ via Wikipedia
Via wikipedia: Beasts of battle: The Beasts of battle is a poetic trope in Old English and Old Norse literature. It consists of the wolf, the raven, and the eagle, traditional animals accompanying the warriors to feast on the bodies of the slain. It occurs in eight Old English poems and in the Old Norse
Read on »Praise Song For The Day
A Poem For Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration
by Elizabeth Alexander
Still I Rise
Maya Angelou You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons
Read on »The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Selections from Leaves of Grass, Song of the Open Road
by Walt Whitman from verse 9 However sweet these laid-up stores–however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here; However shelter’d this port, and however calm these waters, we must not anchor here; However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a little while. … from verse 11 Listen! I
Read on »The Chaos
by Gerard Nolst Trenité Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse. I will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy; Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear; Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer. Pray, console your loving
Read on »How Santa Knows IF you’ve Been Good
(Supposedly written for and sung at a U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Christmas party during the Carter Administration.) –Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law
Read on »Democracy by Langston Hughes
Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear. I have as much right As the other fellow has To stand On my two feet And own the land. I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom
Read on »To Think That I Saw Him On Christopher Street
One day I was bored, I had nothing to do, With nothing to do, you’d be bored. Wouldn’t You? So I sat by my window and feeling so sad, Thought, Maybe I’ll answer a personal ad.
Read on »‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: Internet Version
Author Unknown ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and throughout the net, not a modem was chirping; (It wasn’t mail-hour yet). The peripherals down and backed up with care, In hopes that St. Echo soon would be there. The grad students home all snug in their beds, with hi-res dreams abuzz in their heads. We Sysops
Read on »The Net Before Christmas
by Jim Trudeau & Jay Trudeau (1991) ‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the nets Not a mousie was stirring, not even the pets. The floppies were stacked by the modem with care In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The files were nestled all snug in a folder The screen
Read on »‘Twas The Night Before Techmas
‘Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
Read on »Politically Correct Santa
‘Twas the night before Christmas and Santa’s a wreck… How to live in a world that’s politically correct?
Read on »The Second Coming — W. B Yeats
From the Book: The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction,
Read on »Invictus
William Ernest Henley
Read on »Dr. Seuss Explains Computers
Author Unknown If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report. If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a
Read on »Bush Inaugural Theme Song
Author unknown, (to the tune of "What a Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke
Read on »The End of the Raven (by Edgar Allen Poe’s Cat)
Henry Beard, From The Book: Poetry for Cats
Read on »Abort, Retry, Ignore?
Author Unknown, A Parody of “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
Read on »The Raven
Edgar Allen Poe, Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Read on »Love’s Philosophy
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Read on »The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
Read on »The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus
Read on »From Second April
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Read on »The Highwayman
By Alfred Noyes
Read on »For the Goddess Too Well Known
Elsa Gidlow
Read on »Deteriorata
National Lampoon Radio Dinner Album
Read on »Desiderata
Max Ehrmann
Read on »The Curse of Minerva
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Read on »Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Read on »Poems of Dorothy Parker
From the Book: Portable Dorothy Parker
Read on »Lisa’s Dentistry Haiku
from Lisa
Read on »Two Digits for a Date
Author Unknown (sung to the tune of "Gilligan’s Island", more or less) Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale Of the doom that is our fate. That started when programmers used Two digits for a date… two digits for a date. Main memory was much smaller then; Hard disks were smaller, too. "Four
Read on »To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
Read on »The Lover’s Resolution
George Withers
Read on »Lisa’s Anti-Guido Poetry
from Lisa
Read on »Interlude
Amy Lowell
Read on »Decade
Amy Lowell
Read on »Seuss on Clinton – extended remix
If Dr. Seuss were President Clinton’s lawyer, his deposition might have read something like this. I did not do it in a car I did not do it in a bar I did not do it in the dark I did not do it in the park I did not do it on a date
Read on »Phenomenal Woman
Maya Angelou
Read on »Down South Valentine
author unknown Kudzu is green, my dog’s name is Blue And I’m so lucky to have a sweet thang like you. Yore hair is like cornsilk A-flapping in the breeze. Softer than Blue’s And without all them fleas. You move like the bass, Which excite me in May. You ain’t got no scales But I
Read on »Clone of My Own (Song Parody)
The first verse and chorus are by science fiction writer Randall Garrett. The other verses are by Isaac Asimov. This parody is to be sung to the tune of Home on the Range. Oh, give me a clone Of my own flesh and bone With its Y-chromosome changed to X And when it is grown
Read on »The Prophet "on Marriage"
Khalil Gibran
Read on »The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Christopher Marlowe – 1599
Read on »IF
Rudyard Kipling
Read on »In Excelsis
Amy Lowell
Read on »Selected Sonnets
William Shakespeare
Read on »Poems by Stephen Crane
The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane
Read on »The Condor
Truman Capote
Read on »Cat Haiku
Author Unknown
Read on »She Walks In Beauty
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Read on »Sonnett XLIII
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese
Read on »Unbosoming
Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper
Read on »Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe
Read on »