Children’s Rhymes Poem by Langston Hughes
By what sends
the white kids
I ain’t sent:
I know I can’t
be President.
What don’t bug
them white kids
sure bugs me:
We know everybody
ain’t free.
Lies written down
for white folks
ain’t for us a-tall:
Liberty And Justice–
Huh!–For All?
Butterflies Around Poem by Mehta Hasmukh Amathaal
Painted with natural brush,
Butterflies around plants and bush
I run after them to catch live,
Kids insisting for catch not one but five,
Stayed almost with colourful life,
Spacious bungalow with beautiful wife,
Lavish parties with friends around,
Joy and happiness always found,
Time was passing with precise clock,
Morning started with splendid voice of cock,
Cool breeze, little dews with bright shine,
Life seemed to be easy and passing fine,
Suddenly it sensed I am running out of time,
Something to be done for unfinished goal prime,
planned absolutely nothing for future days,
Though friends suggested and showed the ways,
What did worry me the most?
Were the precious life days stand lost?
Does that it mean to suffer very high cost?
Waited for message to come by post?
I thought of going for final count down,
Destiny was certain and almost known,
The slight thought sent me a chilled wave,
Holding of defeatist views but putting up of front brave,
Days did not pass as I wanted,
Went to holy places and hymns chanted?
Prayed for easy and smooth passage for life journey,
Three fourth of it went for marry making and collecting honey
Success and failure had no other key,
I ran after money like mad monkey,
It was just craze and blind rush,
All luxury at disposal still more the push,
No use to go down or look at the back,
Time wasd nearing end and waiting for final pack,
Realized it so late that nothing will accompany,
Wife, son, daughter or no more holding of company
Humility Poem by Ernestine Northover
Snow, falling thick and white, along the village street,
People struggling through the drifts, their shopping to complete,
Kids dragging sledges, excitement fills their minds,
Rolling a giant snowball, great, cos this is snow that binds.
Trees looking decorated up, with icicles that glint,
Branches weighed down with snow, which holds a golden tint,
That bright red sun that’s setting, way out towards the west,
A wonderful rich vision, ordered at our Lord’s behest.
Wonders of our lands, that are so stunning and so free,
That if we took the time to stare, we’d know true humility.
Gee, You’re So Beautiful That It’s Starting To Rain Poem by Richard Brautigan
Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsicord.
I want high school report cards
to look like this:
Playing with Gentle Glass Things
A
Computer Magic
A
Writing Letters to Those You Love
A
Finding out about Fish
A
Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty
A+!
Jest ‘Fore Christmas Poem by Eugene Field
Father calls me William, sister calls me Will,
Mother calls me Willie, but the fellers call me Bill!
Mighty glad I ain’t a girl – ruther be a boy,
Without them sashes, curls, an’ things that’s worn by Fauntleroy!
Love to chawnk green apples an’ go swimmin’ in the lake –
Hate to take the castor-ile they give for bellyache!
‘Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain’t no flies on me,
But jest ‘fore Christmas I’m as good as I kin be!
Got a yeller dog named Sport, sick him on the cat;
First thing she knows she doesn’t know where she is at!
Got a clipper sled, an’ when us kids goes out to slide,
‘Long comes the grocery cart, an’ we all hook a ride!
But sometimes when the grocery man is worrited an’ cross,
He reaches at us with his whip, an’ larrups up his hoss,
An’ then I laff an’ holler, “Oh, ye never teched me!”
But jest ‘fore Christmas I’m as good as I kin be!
Gran’ma says she hopes that when I git to be a man,
I’ll be a missionarer like her oldest brother, Dan,
As was et up by the cannibuls that lives in Ceylon’s Isle,
Where every prospeck pleases, an’ only man is vile!
But gran’ma she has never been to see a Wild West show,
Nor read the Life of Daniel Boone, or else I guess she’d know
That Buff’lo Bill an’ cow-boys is good enough for me!
Excep’ jest ‘fore Christmas, when I’m good as I kin be!
And then old Sport he hangs around, so solemn-like an’ still,
His eyes they seem a-sayin’: “What’s the matter, little Bill?”
The old cat sneaks down off her perch an’ wonders what’s become
Of them two enemies of hern that used to make things hum!
But I am so perlite an’ ‘tend so earnestly to biz,
That mother says to father: “How improved our Willie is!”
But father, havin’ been a boy hisself, suspicions me
When, jest ‘fore Christmas, I’m as good as I kin be!
For Christmas, with its lots an’ lots of candies, cakes, an’ toys,
Was made, they say, for proper kids an’ not for naughty boys;
So wash yer face an’ bresh yer hair, an’ mind yer p’s and q’s,
An’ don’t bust out yer pantaloons, and don’t wear out yer shoes;
Say “Yessum” to the ladies, an’ “Yessur” to the men,
An’ when they’s company, don’t pass yer plate for pie again;
But, thinkin’ of the things yer’d like to see upon that tree,
Jest ‘fore Christmas be as good as yer kin be!
Children Of The Street Poem by Chinedu Dike
In their faces a colourless gaping of life’s adversity:
the hopeless grief of a hellish existence;
Malnourished, starving, filth and olfactory horrors;
Their humiliating nothingness clothed in rags;
Usually barefooted with low self-esteem;
Begging, and rummaging through garbage for
thrown-away foods to assuage pangs of hunger;
Oftentimes feeling cold that comes from being sickly;
Sleeping or indulging in cheap cocktails of toxic
sedatives at the dark corners of the street:
these dispositions identify them to society as
‘Children Of The Street: The Roofless And Rootless Kids.’
The hapless minors squat in the open on the street,
or at some ill-suited but out of sight places.
Day to day they fall prey to all manner of violence
and abusive treatments, in hostile surroundings
where childhood apparently has come to an end.
They’re menaced by extreme weather conditions:
be it scorching summer heat, severe storms,
or bone-chilling winter temperatures.
They belong to nowhere and to no one:
no place to reckon upon as ‘home sweet home’,
and no comfort whatever is found on the street
where the public spurn them with icy contempt.
‘Children Living On The Street’ is a global reality.
With the urban slums serving as notorious hotbeds,
poverty accompanied by toxic homes account for
a vast number of minors who migrate onto the street.
Family break-up, parental demise, abandonment, war,
and other varied socio-cultural/political changes that
take their toll on them, also prod them into vagrancy.
Left to their fate, the vulnerable kids miss out on
physical, mental, emotional and spiritual growth.
In the absence of needful guidance, they struggle for
survival on the fringes of society – trapped in a cycle
of destitution that only few are lucky to escape from.
‘Homeless Children’ through no fault of their own
are denied the very essentials of childhood.
Unwanted and uncared for they bear the brunt of
all sorts of contagious diseases, lice and bedbugs
infestations, plus the forever pestering flees that feast
on open wounds – with scant access to health care.
Stomachs plagued by worms, they roam the streets
where no public toilets are left ajar to get in free.
Barely clinging to life, roofless kids hang on desperately.
With scarcely any human hands to wipe away tears
of bitter pain, they gnash their teeth in extremities.
Many live and yield up the ghost on the street.
My English Sucks ….. Poem by Bri Edwards
[english (‘poor’) : Almost Medium Length; Education And Life; Ph- Inspired]
When I were schooled english wernt my thing.
My scores in English lurning no bells done ring.
Yea I grajaded but ain’t english smart ….no lie!
Come end a school year the teach said ‘By Bri.’
Was same in bilogy, math, jografy all that stuff.
I done did my best and guess my best were enough.
I did done grate at ball games and in trak run the mile.
I was a THREEletter man and made them girls smile.
I got payed for pumpin gas an turned 18 served my Nation.
For ‘Bravry Under Fire’ in the NAM I were town sensation.
Back home, all tired, I done gone back to the gas station …..
and worked evry week I culd with no vacasion.
One thing lurned what done good for me was fixin cars.
I worked with shirt of to show of my many NAM scars.
A day done come I met a girl from my dreams.
We got now three kids and life is good it seams.
I think my English done even proved a litle bit ….
but if it don’t I don’t’ mind cuz I is happy an don’t give no shit.
Happiness (Reconsidered) Poem by Judith Viorst
Happiness
Is a clean bill of health from the doctor,
And the kids shouldn’t move back home for
more than a year,
And not being audited, overdrawn, in Wilkes-Barre,
in a lawsuit or in traction.
Happiness
Is falling asleep without Valium,
And having two breasts to put in my brassiere,
And not (yet) needing to get my blood pressure lowered,
my eyelids raised or a second opinion.
And on Saturday nights
When my husband and I have rented
Something with Fred Astaire for the VCR,
And we’re sitting around in our robes discussing,
The state of the world, back exercises, our Keoghs,
And whether to fix the transmission or buy a new car,
And we’re eating a pint of rum-raisin ice cream
on the grounds that
Tomorrow we’re starting a diet of fish, fruit and grain,
And my dad’s in Miami dating a very nice widow,
And no one we love is in serious trouble or pain,
And our bringing-up-baby days are far behind us,
But our senior-citizen days have not begun,
It’s not what I called happiness
When I was twenty-one,
But it’s turning out to be
What happiness is.
The Victims Poem by Sharon Olds
When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and
took it in silence, all those years and then
kicked you out, suddenly, and her
kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we
grinned inside, the way people grinned when
Nixon’s helicopter lifted off the South
Lawn for the last time. We were tickled
to think of your office taken away,
your secretaries taken away,
your lunches with three double bourbons,
your pencils, your reams of paper. Would they take your
suits back, too, those dark
carcasses hung in your closet, and the black
noses of your shoes with their large pores?
She had taught us to take it, to hate you and take it
until we pricked with her for your
annihilation, Father. Now I
pass the bums in doorways, the white
slugs of their bodies gleaming through slits in their
suits of compressed silt, the stained
flippers of their hands, the underwater
fire of their eyes, ships gone down with the
lanterns lit, and I wonder who took it and
took it from them in silence until they had
given it all away and had nothing
left but this.
Snow Poem by David Berman
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.
He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.
Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
I didn’t know where I was going with this.
They were on his property, I said.
When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.
We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.
But why were they on his property, he asked.
