Uncle Mike's Favorites
Collections of Short Poems
Collection #2
Cellphone Poetry Series II
Compiled by
Michael P. Garofalo
"The apparition of these
faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet,
black bough."
- Ezra Pound
"And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom."
- Anais Nin
"My life has been the poem
I would have writ;
But I could not both live
and utter it."
-Henry David Thoreau
"Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
exchanging dreams with
seraphim. The city
drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war,
lie stretching into dawn,
unmaked and unheeded."
- Maya Angelou
"the morning glory—
in each flower, the color
of a deep pool
spring drizzle
barely enough to moisten
seashells on the beach"
- Yosa Buson
I write, erase, rewrite
Erase again, and then
A poppy blooms.
-
Katsushika Hokusai
"so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens"
- William Carlos Williams
"I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big
with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted
in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage,
a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train
there’s no getting off."
- Sylvia Plath
"When you appeared it was as if
magnets cleared the air.
I had never seen
that smile before
or your hair, flying silver.
Someone waving goodbye,
she was silver, too.
Of course you didn’t see me.
I called softly so you could choose
not to answer, then called again.
You turned in the light, your eyes
seeking your name."
- Rita Dove
"The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree.
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And save some part
Of a day I had rued."
- Robert Frost
"Long walks at night—
that's what good for the soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired housewives
trying to fight off
their beer-maddened husbands."
- Charles Bukowski
Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo
"Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!
In thy fats our cares be drown'd,
With thy grapes our hairs be crown'd:
Cup us, till the world go round,
Cup us, till the world go round!"
- William Shakespeare
Over the wintry
Forest, winds howl in rage
With no leaves to blow.
- Natsume Soseki
"The moon's my constant mistress,
And the lovely owl my marrow;
The flaming drake
and the night crow make
Me music to my sorrow."
- William Shakespeare
"Our novels get longa and longa
Their language gets stronga and stronga
There’s much to be said
For a life that is led
In illiterate places like Bonga!"
- H. G. Wells
"The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The taste
Of rain
—Why kneel?
- Jack Kerouac
"Snow yet remaining
The mountain slopes are misty
An evening in spring.
Far away the water flows
Past the plum-scented village.
In the river breeze
The willow trees are clustered
Spring is appearing.
The sound of a boat being poled
Clear in the morning light.
The moon!
does it still
Over fog-enshrouded fields
Linger in the sky?"
- Japanese Renga
"Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."
- Wallace Stevens
"Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In coice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles--
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things."
- Gary Snyder
"In nooks and corners
Cold remains:
Flowers of the plum."
- Yosa Buson
"The Arrows of Time
never rest,
moving forward unrelenting
irreversible
from hot towards cold
from organized to disorganized
from past to future
from moving towards stillness
from life towards death.
Or,
so it seems,
to us,
with our little particulars,
with our homebrew views,
with our social habits a must.
The Spiderwebs of Time
are legion
multitudes of nows and thens;
Uncountable heres and theres
unhitched
from any eternal present
everywhere.
The Moments of Time
are a matrix of memories,
colored by fondness,
vaguer and vaguer by the day,
fading, cropped, mixed,
deleted, falling away.
The Times of Your Life
from birth to death,
can't be denied.
How did you live?
Where, when, why?
What did it mean?
Was a little a lie?"
- Michael Garofalo
"Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plan
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad."
- Christina Rosetti
"As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.'
- Henry Wadsworth Longellow
“Take leaves at first, curled crisp by autumn’s cold—
Crush them to crumbly powder in a tray
To make a simple palette of decay
In varied tints of brown and red and gold.
Next flower petals, multicolored, bold
In stark chromatic contrasts—dry and bray
Them in a mortar till you cannot say
Which shade is which. Then choose a jar to hold
This mix of leaf and petal. Stir it well.
Put in dried leaves of mint, of basil, sage;
and lavender and lilac, eglantine—
The lily, rue, and camphor’s pungent smell.
Seal up the jar and simply let it age—
The alchemy of death will work unseen.”
- Joseph Salemi
"A willow;
and two or three cows
waiting for the boat."
- Shiki
"Go to the end of the path
until you get to the gate.
Go through the gate and head
straight out towards the horizon.
Keep going towards the horizon.
Sit down and have a rest
every now and again,
But keep on going, just keep on with it.
Keep on going as far as you can.
That’s how you get there."
- Leunig
"Before the white chrysanthemum
the scissors hesitate
a moment."
- Yosa Buson
“There was a young lady of Niger
who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
with the lady inside,
and the smile on the face of the tiger.”
- Edward Lear
“There was an Old Man in a tree,
Who was horribly bored by a bee.
When they said "Does it buzz?"
He replied "Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!"
- Edward Lear
"This dewdrop world—
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet ..."
- Kobayashi Issa
"Not everything lost will be found.
I keep my high hopes on the ground.
Despite what we're taught,
More often than not,
What goes around just goes around."
- O.V. Michaelsen
“A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more.”
- Leigh Mercer
a hollyhock
shot up to meet
the summer solstice
- Shiki
“There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.”
- A Princeton Professor
“There was an Old Man with a beard
Who said, “It is just as I feared!”
Two Owls and a Hen
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”
- Edward Lear
"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
- William Shakespeare
Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo
Haiku, Brief Free Verse, Photos
Tercets, Concrete Poems, Quartets
Cinquains, Waka, Couplets, Senryu
Sonnets, Limericks, Quatrains
Under 30 Letters is Best per Line of Text
Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series I
“Down the road someone is practicing scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Man’s heart expands to tinker with his car
For this is Sunday morning, Fate’s great bazaar;
Regard these means as ends, concentrate on this Now,
And you may grow to music or drive beyond Hindhead anyhow,
Take corners on two wheels until you go so fast
That you can clutch a fringe or two of the windy past,
That you can abstract this day and make it to the week of time
A small eternity, a sonnet self-contained in rhyme.
But listen, up the road, something gulps, the church spire
Opens its eight bells out, skulls’ mouths which will not tire
To tell how there is no music or movement which secures
Escape from the weekday time. Which deadens and endures.”
- Louis MacNeice
"O snail
Climb Mount Fugi,
But slowly, slowly!"
- Kobayashi Issa
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death."
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face—the face of one long dead—
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Boundless grasses over the plain
Come and go with every season;
Wildfire never quite consumes them—
They are tall once more in the spring wind.
Sweet they press on the old high- road
And reach the crumbling city-gate—
O Prince of Friends, you are gone again.
I hear them sighing after you."
- Bai Juyi
"The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog
I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
on your breasts.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood
we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
drinking wine."
- Gary Snyder
Consider me
As one who loved poetry
And persimmons.
- Shiki
"With my cell phone
In my pocket
I wait for you to call
I guess you might think
It’s a way
Of carrying you with me
So you’ll never leave
From the start
To the end of the day."
- C. J. Krieger
pruning a rose
sound of the scissors
on a bright May day
- Shiki
"I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird
We text, text, text
our significant words.
I re-read your first,
your second, your third,
look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.
The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.
I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.
Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard."
- Carol Anne Duffy
"A bath when you're born,
a bath when you die,
how stupid."
- Kobayashi Issa
"Wal, Thanksgivin' do be comin' round.
With the price of turkeys on the bound,
And coal, by gum! Thet were just found,
Is surely gettin' cheaper.
The winds will soon begin to howl,
And winter, in its yearly growl,
Across the medders begin to prowl,
And Jack Frost gettin' deeper.
By shucks! It seems to me,
That you I orter be
Thankful, that our Ted could see
A way to operate it.
I sez to Mandy, sure, sez I,
I'll bet thet air patch o' rye
Thet he'll squash 'em by-and-by,
And he did, by cricket!
No use talkin', he's the man;
One of the best thet ever ran,
Fer didn't I turn Republican
One o' the fust?
I 'lowed as how he'd beat the rest,
But old Si Perkins, he hemmed and guessed,
And sed as how it wuzn't best
To meddle with the trust."
- Ezra Pound
"After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do."
- Gary Snyder
"Lightning!
Stopping at the parched field:
the evening sky."
- Yosa Buson
"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
- T. S. Eliot
behind the stand
of winter trees
a red sunset
- Shiki
Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo
"Sitting in the employee kitchen,
Mrs. Lesnick and Uncle Mike,
on their last break,
before their last shift tonight.
They sipped coffees and chatted.
Suddenly, she looked startled,
then collapsed on the floor.
Help arrived, but sadly,
she died.
None of those there in '74,
will ever forgot that sad scene,
of poor Josephine,
lying dead on the floor."
- Michael P. Garofalo
"In the thicket's shade
a woman by herself
singing the rice-planting song."
- Kobayashi Issa
Cuttings: Haiku and Short Poems
Pulling Onions: Over 1,000 One-Liners
Green Way Research Subject Index
Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series #9
Text, graphics, photos, and webpage design
by Michael P. Garofalo.
Updated: July 7, 2022
© Green Way Research
All Rights Reserved