The Ocean Doesn't Want Me Today by Tom Waits

This one is depressing, so don't say I didn't warn you!! It's about death, one of my favourite topics! Only mine, I assure you!

I came across this poem today. Well, again, this is a song, and not strictly, a poem. But when I heard it, it was like a poem recited, no music, no nothing.

So, it got me thinking. What if death betrays you? What if you want to die, and death doesn't comply? What if you just want your heart to stop at the next beat, but it just goes on beating? What if you don't want to breathe, but can't hold your breath? What if life conspires against you to make you go on living?

What if the ocean doesn't want me today?


The ocean doesn't want me today
But I'll be back tomorrow to play
And the strangels will take me, down deep in their brine
The mischievous braingels, down into the endless blue wine
I'll open my head and let out all of my time
I'd love to go drowning
And to stay and to stay

But the ocean doesn't want me today

I'll go in up to here
It can't possibly hurt
All they will find is my beer and my shirt
A rip tide is raging and the life guard is away

But the ocean doesn't want me today

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Read this one years and years ago. Even now, it moves me as much as it did then....

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Happy by Lighthouse Family

Ok, ok, strictly speaking this is not a poem, it's a song. And that too
by a pop group. But good poetry is good poetry, wherever it's heard -


Hey, what's happened to our lives?
When did you and me forget how to have a good time?
And I've got to get back to the life
That we forgot 'cos we got too much on our minds

Hey, we got to make some time
for the stuff that you can't buy
And get a life
'cos you know all that serious stuff ain't no fun

Hey let's all go out tonight
Why don t you and me go out and have a good time?
Make our life a supernatural high
Cos we're both leaving all that bad stuff far behind

Hey there's gonna come a time
you kiss it all goodbye
So get a life
'cos you ain't got a clue when that day's gonna come

Who says you can't be happy all the time?
I know but I'm still gonna try

Who says you can't be happy all the time?
Say what you like but I'm still gonna try

But I'm still gonna try
But I'm still gonna try

From '1984' by George Orwell

Read '1984' recently. Never knew that George Orwell also tried his hand at poetry! Liked this one among many others in the book, which incidentally, is one great book!


It was an ’opeless fancy,
It passed like an Ipril dye,
but a look an’ a word an’ the dreams they stirred
They have stolen my ’eart awye!

They sye that time ’eals all things,
they say you can always forget;
but the smiles an’ the tears across the years
They twist my ’eart-strings yet!

A Tongue of Wood by Stephen Crane

Moving, to say the least! Read it in the subway as part of New York's 'Poetry in Motion' movement. Some of the other poems are also from there.

There was a man with tongue of wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable.
But there was one who heard
The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood
And knew what the man
Wished to sing,
And with that the singer was content.

Parlour-Piece by Ted Hughes

I never thought that it was possible to portray unsaid emotions and feelings in English as you could in several other Indian languages; until I came across this one. Subtle, yet powerful!....

With love so like fire they dared not
Let it out into strawy small talk
With love so like a flood they dared not
Let out a trickle lest the whole crack

These two sat speechlessly
Pale cool tea in tea-cups chaperoned
Stillness, silence, the eyes
Where fire and flood strained.

Unnamed (I call it Life) by Dorothy Parker

An old time favourite! Sometimes this is how life feels!!!...

Razors pain you
Rivers are damp
Acids stain you
Drugs cause a cramp
Guns aren't lawful
Nooses give
Gas smells awful...
You might as well live.

A Coat by W. B. Yeats

Touching. A poem from 'Poetry in Motion' run by the Poetry Society of America, from the New York subway....

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;

But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.

Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.