Quotes by Poets - Page 142

I'm Bipolar but as normal as you except for the times my mind thinks like two
Stanley Victor Paskavich
you'll never see my books on Vanity Fair I'm not the type of author they would want there
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Yes I'm Bipolar but I'm as normal as you except the times when my mind thinks like two
Stanley Victor Paskavich
The Mania SpeaksYou clumsy bootlegger. Little daffodil.I watered you with an ocean and you plucked one little vein?Downed a couple bottles of pills and got yourself carted off to the ER? I gifted you the will of gunpowder, a matchstick tongue, and all you managed was a shredded sweater and a police warning? You should be legend by now.Girl in an orange jumpsuit, a headline.I built you from the purest napalm, fed you wine and bourbon.Preened you in the dark, hammered lullabies into your thin skull.I painted over the walls, wrote the poems. I shook your goddamn boots. Now you want out? Think you’ll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions?A good man’s good love and some breathing exercises? You think I can’t tame that? I always come home. Always. Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody: I’m bigger than God.
Jeanann Verlee
There is always a man eager to explain my mental illness to me. They all do it so confidently, motioning to their Hemingway and Bukowski bookshelf as they compare my depression to their late-night loneliness. There is always someone that rejected them that they equate their sadness to and a bottle of gin (or a song playing, or a movie) close by that they refer to as their cure. Somehow, every soft confession of my Crazy that I hand to them turns into them pulling out pieces of themselves to prove how it really is in my head.So many dudes I’ve dated have faces like doctors ready to institutionalize and love my crazy (but only on Friday nights.)They tell their friends about my impulsive decision making and how I “get them” more than anyone they’ve ever met but leave out my staring off in silence for hours and the self-inflicted bruises on my cheeks.None of them want to acknowledge a crazy they can’t cure.They want a crazy that fits well into a trope and gives them a chance to play Hero. And they always love a Crazy that provides them material to write about.Truth is they love me best as a cigarette cloud of impossibility, with my lipstick applied perfectly and my Crazy only being pulled out when their life needs a little spice.They don’t want me dirty, having not left my bed for days. Not diseased. Not real.So they invite me over when they’re going through writer’s block but don’t answer my calls during breakdowns. They tell me I look beautiful when I’m crying then stick their hands in-between my thighs. They mistake my silence for listening to them attentively and say my quiet mouth understands them like no one else has.These men love my good dead hollowness. Because it means less of a fighting personality for them to force out. And is so much easier to fill someone who has already given up with themselves.
Lora Mathis
Office Peone looked at John and wondered what mental illness he had. The Seattle streets were filled with the mostly-crazy, half-crazy, nearly crazy, and soon-to-be crazy. Indian, white, Chicano, Asian, men, women, children. The social workers did not have anywhere near enough money, training, or time to help them. The city government hated the crazies because they were a threat to the public image of the urban core. Private citizens ignored them at all times of the year except the few charitable days leading up to and following Christmas. In the end, the police had to do most of the work. Police did crisis counseling, transporting them howling to detox, the dangerous to jail, racing the sick to the hospitals, to a safer place. At the academy, Officer Peone figured he would be fighting bad guys. He did not imagine he would spend most of his time taking care of the refuse of the world. Peone found it easier when the refuse were all nuts or dumb-ass drunks, harder when they were just regular folks struggling to find their way off the streets.
Sherman Alexie
I knew you were in charge of me but my mind broke on its own.
Alice Notley
Narcissists often feign oppression because narcissists always feel entitled.
Criss Jami
Killing yourself slowly is still killing yourself. Wanting to die is not the same as wanting to come home. Recovery is hard work. Not wanting to die is hard work.
Blythe Baird
What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.
Sylvia Plath
I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn’t say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed.
Sylvia Plath
I am not being overly harsh. Overtly hostile, yes, but exactly the right amount of harsh.
Jennifer Harrison
When all else fails...try smoking a good cigar and have a stiff drink. If that doesn't work...have another.
Timothy Pina
So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he'd been invited, but at an address he couldn't actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his; only, right at the moment, it wasn't him.
Margaret Atwood
Everything in balance, everything in moderation – try not to go over the top in any direction but be free to explore & enjoy. Live heart-fully.I’m a writer & philosopher, of course I have the right to invent words! I try not to do it carelessly, I only write what sounds and feels right.
Jay Woodman
I have learnt from the politics of my great country, Nigeria that there is nothing wrong with the heads of states, but there is something wrong with the state of the heads.
Ogwo David Emenike
Divide and rule, the politician cries;Unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Never follow a follower who is following someone who has fallen. It's why the whole world is falling apart.
Suzy Kassem
To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.
Fernando Pessoa
The success of any country relies on the commitment of its leaders to serve others.
Gift Gugu Mona
In life we all should learn to forgive but never forget. Best way to learn from our mistakes.
Jonathan Anthony Burkett
True friendship is the best gift in life.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
Friendship lasts for four seasons and more.
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
True friendships are life-saving bridges over troubled waters.
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
It was a good apple too. A good apple, picked by a madman on a full moon night.
Steven Herrick
And at night the river flows, it bears pale stars on the holy water, some sink like veils, some show like fish, the great moon that once was rose now high like a blazing milk flails its white reflection vertical and deep in the dark surgey mass wall river's grinding bed push. As in a sad dream, under the streetlamp, by pocky unpaved holes in dirt, the father James Cassidy comes home with lunchpail and lantern, limping, redfaced, and turns in for supper and sleep.Now a door slams. The kids have rushed out for the last play, the mothers are planning and slamming in kitchens, you can hear it out in swish leaf orchards, on popcorn swings, in the million-foliaged sweet wafted night of sighs, songs, shushes. A thousand things up and down the street, deep, lovely, dangerous, aureating, breathing, throbbing like stars; a whistle, a faint yell; the flow of Lowell over rooftops beyond; the bark on the river, the wild goose of the night yakking, ducking in the sand and sparkle; the ululating lap and purl and lovely mystery on the shore, dark, always dark the river's cunning unseen lips, murmuring kisses, eating night, stealing sand, sneaky.'Mag-gie!' the kids are calling under the railroad bridge where they've been swimming. The freight train still rumbles over a hundred cars long, the engine threw the flare on little white bathers, little Picasso horses of the night as dense and tragic in the gloom comes my soul looking for what was there that disappeared and left, lost, down a path--the gloom of love. Maggie, the girl I loved.
Jack Kerouac
The worst things always happen at night, and oftener than one would think on stormy nights. ("The Compensation House")
Charles Collins
A night of exhilaration, of boredom and terror, in which the merest of sounds took on other forms - grew large in the expanse of darkness. After several hours the sheep gradually stopped calling to each other from accross the river banks, and a brittle quiet descended. I desperately wanted to walk down to the water's edge. To see the black river in the moonlight. But a mixture of reason and fear kept me locked along the safe paths high above.
Richard Skelton
Night is a world lit by itself
Antonio Porchia
We should live, my Lesbia, and loveAnd value all the talk of stricterOld men at a single penny.Suns can set and rise again;For us, once our brief light has set,There's one unending night for sleeping.Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,Then another thousand, then a second hundred,Then still another thousand, then a hundred;Then, when we've made many thousands,We'll muddle them so as not to knowOr lest some villain overlook usKnowing the total of our kisses.(Translated by Guy Lee)
Catullus
POSTNot a head stands out A finger rises Then it is the voice that one knows A signal a brief note A man leaves Up above a cloud that passes by No one goes in And the night keeps its secret
Pierre Reverdy
Art thou like me, child of my darkest heart? And dost thou think my untamed thoughts and speak my vast language?” “Yea, we are twin brothers, O, Night; for thou revealest space and I reveal my soul.
Kahlil Gibran
Life is very tough and fragile at the same time, it never backs down or surrenders, but will break open to reveal its beauty and ugliness. As a evening primrose that blooms in the flooding moonlight, just before being trampled upon underfoot by the four-legged frost of the night.
Anthony Liccione
I've always felt that distant train whistles heard in the dead of night are the universe's way of letting us know the best days are neither ahead nor behind us...they're happening right now, cradled in the palms of our hands. But that doesn't change the fact that the whiskey, weed, and romance eventually runs out and the night will soon turn to day.
Dave Matthes
from the prose poem "The Universe Thrums on regardless" in my book SPAN.We are almost nothing in the night. Reduced to warm blobs and the sound of breathing. There is comfort in that.
Jay Woodman
I went to the little window and inhaled the country air. One could hear the breathing of the night, feminine, enormous.("The Blue Bouquet")
Octavio Paz
I went to the little window and inhaled the country air. One could hear the breathing of the night, feminine, enormous.
Octavio Paz
The blue light of the rising moon fell on the rocks and the scant forest of the taiga, revealing each projecting rock, each tree in a peculiar fashion, different from the way they looked by day. Everything seemed real but different than in the daytime. It was as if the world had a second face, a nocturnal face.
Octavio Paz
He's looking into the night, in case a shadow comes to listen and look.
Herta Müller
When he appeared before the lord, his lordship was smitten immediately with the boy's unadorned beauty, like a first glimpse of the moon rising above a distant mountain. The boy's hair gleamed like the feathers of a raven perched silently on a tree, and his eyes were lovely as lotus flowers. One by one his other qualities became apparent, from his nightingale voice to his gentle disposition, as obedient and true as a plum blossom.
Saikaku Ihara
But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy waysI cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
John Keats
...before the dawn I leave the night behind meand before my heart I let you leave me behind.- from the poem 'Behind
Munia Khan
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all timetables.
Pablo Neruda
Seeing that I would never manage to fall asleep, I arose, lit a candle, and after dressing went outside.Beneath the dull glow of the winter moon the snow glowed like pale blue china. The sidewalks sparkled weakly beneath the rays of the flickering street lamps; the benumbed streets slumbered forlornly. I walked, passing one corner after the other, and suddenly found myself on the edge of town. Further, beyond the square, an endless expanse began to glisten with a somber silverness.I stopped just before the gates. My intent gaze could distinguish nothing in the distant white expanse. Before me rose the imposing bank of the Volga like a gigantic snowdrift. So barren and uninviting was this deserted view resembling eternity that my heart contracted.I turned to the right and approached quite close to the monastery enclosure. From behind the bronze gates, glimmered a dense net of crosses and gravestones. The ancient eyes of the church gazed forbiddingly down on me, and with an eerie feeling I thought of the monks sleeping at this moment in tomb-like cells together with corpses. Were any of them thinking of the hour of death on this night?("Lamia")
Boris Sadovskoy
...yes, in the obscured sky a moon does float, newly, a wishing moon, a sliver of ancient rock, a goddess, a wink.
Margaret Atwood
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
Sylvia Plath
Love in a night shall live and die,Love in a day shall wing and fly;Love in the Spring shall last an hour,Easily fade a spring-tide flower.
Aleister Crowley
Tahtahta-ha-ha' clattered the wheels. A lamp outside the window nodded to him. Another. A third. The lamps ceased to wink. Night without winking clung to the windows.("Adam")
Andrei Bely
There is a romance about all those who are abroad in the black hours.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Still as On windless nights The moon-cast shadows are, So still will be my heart when I Am dead.
Adelaide Crapsey
Somewhere in the night ahuman being is drowning.
Marina Tsvetaeva
Stars are cracks of light for night than pierces the heart. (Étoiles sont fissures de lumière - De la nuit que transperce le cœur.)
Charles de Leusse
With night's Dim veil and blue I will cover my eyes, I will bind close my eyes that are So weary.
Adelaide Crapsey
Yo me salgo desnudo a la calle,maduro de versos perdidos.I step naked into the streetripe with lost poems.
Federico García Lorca
The lamp hummed:'Regard the moon,La lune ne garde aucune rancune,She winks a feeble eye,She smiles into corners.She smoothes the hair of the grass.The moon has lost her memory.A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,Her hand twists a paper rose,That smells of dust and old Cologne,She is aloneWith all the old nocturnal smellsThat cross and cross across her brain."The reminiscence comesOf sunless dry geraniumsAnd dust in crevices,Smells of chestnuts in the streets,And female smells in shuttered rooms,And cigarettes in corridorsAnd cocktail smells in bars.
T.S Eliot
Don’t wait up for me tonight, for the night will be black and white.
Gérard de Nerval
Last night, I was a mad man searching for a whiff of your fragrance. The stars and the moon even laughed at me.
Avijeet Das
It was raining that night, when we kissed for the first time.
Avijeet Das
I ran from them. Nights, yellow lights scoured sand. What was ever found but women in skirts folded around the men they loved that Friday? No one found me. And how could that have been, here, whereeven botanical names were recordedand small roads mapped in red?Night, the sky is black paper pecked with pinholes.
Deborah Ager
the train plunges on through the pitch-black nightI never knew I liked the night pitch-blacksparks fly from the engineI didn't know I loved sparksI didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return
Nâzım Hikmet