I usually have to have a guitar in hand to recall this poem

Well, I got a little red rooster
Too lazy to crow 'fore day
Well, I got a little red rooster
Too lazy to crow 'fore day
Keep everything in the barnyard
Upset in every way

Well, the dogs begin to bark
Hound begin to howl
Well, the dogs begin to bark
Hound begin to howl
Oh, watch out, strange kin people
Little red rooster is on the prowl

Oh, if you see my little red rooster
Please drive him home
Well, if you see my little red rooster
Please drive him home
There ain't no peace in the barnyard
Since the little red rooster been gone

Willie Dixon

Candy is dandy,
But Liquor is quicker.

Ogden Nash

I had to memorize/recite a poem in Junior High. I got a C-. The teacher said it WAS a poem and I recited it. I still think I should have gotten an A.

"Booty, booty, booty, booty, rockin' everywhere
Rockin' everywhere
Rockin' everywhere" --Bubba Sparxxx

Watch "Candy Cane" on YouTube

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Being a lover of the ocean and being a complete bliss with a strong wind filling my sails, this seems to fit

Whales Weep Not!
D. H. Lawrence, 1885 - 1930
They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
the sea!

And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and
comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale’s
fathomless body.

And over the bridge of the whale’s strong phallus, linking the
wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and
forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the
sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.
And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-
tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of
the beginning and the end.

And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!

and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.

First poem I ever learned

hamelin town is in Brunswick ,
in famous Hanover City
the River weser deep and wide
Washes its walls on the southern side
but when begins my ditty
almost three hundred years ago,
to hear the townsfolk suffer so,
from vermin twas a pity.
Rats!

I won't carry on
its really really long!

Death may come at a crawl, or come with a pounce.
It matters not, the reason or why.
But it's not so much that you're dead that counts.
But only; how did you die?

There once was a man from Nantucket....

But seriously, folks.

It's a bit greeting card esque, but I've always found Robert Frost's, Two Roads Diverged In A Yellow Wood to be an excellent reflection on life choices and the acceptance of one's fate based on those choices.

PSALM of SONYA

Reality is my shepherd. I shall not want. It makes me lie down in green pastures. It leads me beside still waters. It restores my soul. It leads me in the paths of righteousness for its name sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadows of death, I will fear no evil, for art with me. Reality prepares a table before me in the presence of my people; it anoints my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Here's one of my weird poems:

*"The Philosophers' Stoned"

Or

*"I Think, Therefore I Am!....I Think?"

Oh, I'm off to a parallel universe, to leave all my troubles behind.

The fact is the neighbourhood's getting worse and the kids drive me out of my mind.

So next time, I'll exclude revision, when I come to that fork in the road,

The other way is my decision; it will lead to a different abode.

If I think back to how I first got here - and if I hadn't taken that train,

I'd be living somewhere but not here - but I'd visit just now and again!

But what if I'd been in a car crash? The thought has just entered my head,

That if it was really a hard smash, maybe somewhere else, I am dead!

So perhaps I am poised at the portal of some mystical, spiritual place,

Or could it mean I am immortal or just a sad psychotic case?

When confronted with multiple choices, I'm determined to use my free will,

But I usually start hearing voices. Could I be metaphysically ill?

Please forgive my involuntary chatter, but the answer, I think you will find

Is a question of mind over matter. Does it matter if I change my mind?

Next time you let something annoy you, (which can be really painful to bear),

Be patient: don't let it destroy you. Remember, it's not really there!

When I think of the past and the future, a memory compared with a dream,

It appears that the present's a suture, so is consciousness only a seam?

And it seems very hard to get answers to the questions I've asked since my youth,

But a curious mind is a cancer that nibbles away at the truth.

When you stand and look up at the night sky, at the moon and the millions of stars,

Do you really think God is a nice guy or a demon that's hiding on Mars?

But is there a God or a Devil? The answer would leave us unnerved!

And how could it be on the level when we see the horizon is curved?

If you travel quite fast without turning, (a little bit quicker than light),

You can start out one day on a journey and come back the previous night!

And if you were wrapped in asbestos and sped on for a decade or two,

You could meet with your ancient ancestors and shake hands with Brian Boru!

But Albert Einstein's "Special Theory" wasn't put to this practical test,

‘Cos they know the results would be ‘skeery' and Hawking would be unimpressed.

And talking of Hawking and Dawkins, and the origin from which we sprang,

The thought came to me while out walking: was it God who set off the "Big Bang"?

When I sit contemplating divinity, sometimes visions appear in this state.

Could that be the sign for infinity, or a fanciful figure of eight?

When the hour hand is way past eleven, you may ask (as you draw your last breath),

"Well, is there a hell or a heaven, and is there a life after death?"

Oh, if we could but draw back the curtain and we could cross over that bridge…

But I'm certain that nothing is certain! Are you sure the light's off in your fridge?

*You choose - if you think you can!

William Carlos Williams, a New Jersey doctor and poet wrote The Red Wheelbarrow, a simple poem that radiates so much from a simple scene that it's quite amazing. There is a story that the inspiration for the poem came about from his visiting a patient on a farm in New Jersey (back in the day when Doctors actually made house calls). The patient was bed ridden and doing poorly, one of her few joys was the view of the yard outside her room...so much depended on it.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

With apologies to Robert Frost, I only remember the first poem I wrote at age seven:

I saw a sausage running around the street.
He had itsy-bitsy feet.
He ran around and around and around,
And he jumped from the windowsill onto the ground.

I was amazed at the things he could do!
He could even tie his little shoe.
That night when I went to bed,
He turned a somersault and fell on his head.