Quotes by Poets - Page 223

We all wear masksto veil the truth.Truth is nakedness.Truth is fear.Truth is the gardener making you sit on his lapasking you tolight his cigarette.Truth is father— with a limp cigarette on his lips —telling you to never use his matches to light it for him.Truth is father yelling:"It is not nice for little girls to do so”.Truth is a curious girlwanting to ignite a matchlike a woman.Truth is the maid watching from the kitchen,knowing.But knowing isn’t truth.Truth is the maid calling:Come. Come.Truth is the gardener understanding. But understanding isn’t truth.Truth is the maid saying,"Stay away!"Truth is a girl thinking she is in control.That nothing happened, nothing bad.But the truest truthis a girl knowing, a girl understanding thaton that daysomeone stole a little piece of her truth.
Kamand Kojouri
I escape disaster by writing a poem with a joke in it:The past, present, and future walk into a bar—it was tense.
Kelli Russell Agodon
Language is rich, and malleable. It is a living, vibrant material, and every part of a poem works in conjunction with every other part - the content, the place, the diction, the rhythm, the tone-as well as the very sliding, floating, thumping, rapping sounds of it.
Mary Oliver
One has to commit a painting,' said Degas,'the way one commits a crime.
Elizabeth Bishop
How—I didn't know anyword for it—how "unlikely". . .How had I come to be here,like them, and overheara cry of pain that could havegot loud and worse but hadn't?
Elizabeth Bishop
It was soldier's went marching over the rocks,and still they came in watery flocks,because it was spring and the birds had to come,No doubt that soldier's had to be marching,and that the drums had to be rolling, rolling, rolling
Wallace Stevens
Determined, I riseand face the dawn with resolve.This time I will win.
Richelle E. Goodrich
The sweetest melody that playson starry nights and wintry days,most soothing to my listening earsand calming to beleaguering fears,I call a symphony on air―the song of sweet, still silence rare.
Richelle E. Goodrich
You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams
Kahlil Gibran
At childhood’s end, the houses petered outinto playing fields, the factory, allotmentskept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods. It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big earshe had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,away from home, to a dark tangled thorny placelit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazersnagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoesbut got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem.I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, forwhat little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?Then I slid from between his heavy matted pawsand went in search of a living bird – white dove –which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth.One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the backof the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books.Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.But then I was young – and it took ten years in the woods to tell that a mushroomstoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birdsare the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolfhowls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axeto a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmonto see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolfas he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all
Carol Ann Duffy
In lands I never saw, they say, Immortal Alps look down,Whose bonnets touch the firmament,Whose sandals touch the town, ―Meek at whose everlasting feetA myriad daisies play.Which, sir, are you, and which am I.Upon an August day?
Emily Dickinson
and angle of vision, dust, gravity, solitude, and the part of the law which is the world's waitingand the part of the law which is my waiting,and the part which is my impatience—now; now?—though there are, there really arethings in the world, you must believe me.
Jorie Graham
More than loud acclaim, I loveBooks, silence, thought, my alcove.Pangur BánPoem by Anon Irish Monk, Translated by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Inside the woods is an abandoned hotel.Trees grow in the lobbyand up through the rooms.Limbs jut out through the windows.It looks like outsideinside.I climb the treesthrough 1000 rooms.I look for youin each of them.You’re a long shiny line.
Zachary Schomburg
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,Now the sun is laid to sleep,Seated in thy silver chair,State in wonted manner keep:Hesperus entreats thy light,Goddess excellently bright.Earth, let not thy envious shadeDare itself to interpose,Cynthia's shining orb was madeHeaven to clear when day did close:Bless us then with wished sight,Goddess excellently bright.Lay thy bow of pearl apart,And thy crystal-shining quiver,Give unto the flying hartSpace to breath, how short soever:Thou that mak'st a day of night-Goddess excellently bright.
Ben Jonson
Amour, love, the dream of man,Woman’s deep devoted plan.AmourAmor means no hungry child,Begging, hair blowing wild.Searching amongst the rats and mice,Left-over food, contaminated rice.Eyes, the saddest soul sight,Hidden is the child’s plight.Bleeding feet, glass cut bare,Dirty rags for a child to wear.Clambering through the bin,Society’s senseless sin.Amor, love save this child’s life,Poverty is the nefarious knife,A child of poverty and strife,Deserves amour, love of life.Maureen Brindle from Beloved Isles[Inspired by H.H. Princess Maria Amor We Care for Humanity]
Maureen Brindle
I don't know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all the roses. Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
E.E. Cummings
no time agoor else a lifewalking in the darki met christjesus)my heartflopped overand lay stillwhile he passed(asclose as i’m to youyes closermade of nothingexcept loneliness.
E.E. Cummings
It is snowing and death bugs meas stubborn as insomnia.
Anne Sexton
Wadsworth MoorWhere the millstone of skyGrinds light and shadow so purple-fineAnd has ground it so longGrinding the skin off the earthEarth bleeds her raw true darknessA land naked now as a woundThat the sun swabs and dabsWhere the miles of agony are numbnessAnd harebell and heather a euphoria
Ted Hughes
… my words are lovewhich willfully parades inits room, refusing to move.
Frank O'Hara
I found an empty chairand sat on itto find myself even emptier.I found a broken glassand looked at itto see my dissolved facea little prettierI found a steep doorwayand enteredin order to close my exit.From the poem 'Blue Stanzas
Munia Khan
Talentless and incompetent as I am, there are two things I can do, and two things only: walk, with my own two feet; compose, composing my poems.
Santōka Taneda
And what I said was I’ll miss you, What I meant to say was that I love you, What I wanted to say was that I meant what I said I miss you like I miss my own bedafter too many nights of sleeping on couchesor hardwood floors Or sitting silently behind the doors Of hotel rooms became wounds Breathing life in to this loneliness I miss youLike a burn victim must miss their own skinI miss you like a sad ending Must miss someplace new to beginBecause some say that the highway becomes a flat line if you travel it for too longI can’t tell if that’s true or false, But I’m racing down it towards you trying to find myPulse.
Shane L. Koyczan
Anything is a poem if you say it often enough.
Catherynne M. Valente
I scared a little porcupineand caught a quill in my behind.It hurt so badly in my tail,but tugging on it made me yell.The porcupine was still around,so I complained. He simply frownedand said, "Stop whining! Look and seehow many quills are stuck on me!
Richelle E. Goodrich
And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me. 
Pablo Neruda
Impassionate gods have never seen the red that is the Tatsuta River. /ちはやぶる 神代も聞かず 竜田川 からくれなゐに 水くくるとは
Ariwara no Narihira
Journeying over many seas & through many countries I came dear brother to this pitiful leave-taking The last gestures by your gravesideThe futility of words over your quiet ashes.Life cleft us from each other Pointlessly depriving brother of brotherAccept then, our parents' customThese offerings, this leave-takingEchoing forever, brother, through a brother's tears
Catullus
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!O falling fire and piercing cryand panic, and a weak mailed fistclenched ignorant against the sky!
Elizabeth Bishop
… and I’ll be happy here and happy there, fullof tea and tears
Frank O'Hara
May I live to see the day when I long for the agony I feel now. /ながらへば またこのごろや しのばれむ 憂しと見し世ぞ いまは恋しき
Fujiwara no Kiyosuke
With people you can never tell, Will they have changed when next we meet? But here in my dear old home at least, The plums still smell as sweet. / 人はいさ 心も知らず ふるさとは 花ぞ昔の 香ににほひける
Fujiwara no Okikaze
Oh, you cherry petals, On this calm and balmy day, Why are you so restless, So keen to fly away? / ひさかたの 光のどけき 春の日に しづ心なく 花の散るらむ
Ki no Tomonori
You are a cool cemetery.You have the sinner’s graveYou have the saint’s earthcollidingYou have all the bedsnarrow as a knife;as if a rally of tombstones to defend death.But you can’t really postponethe inauguration of my burial,can you?From the poem - Few Words to Cemetery
Munia Khan
I forgot to supannoyancefrom his glass full ofmingled dread and rageNow let me takea small draught of solacefrom my own little cupfull of predicaments!From the poem- Draught
Munia Khan
I don't feel at home where I am,or where I spend time; only where,beyond counting, there's freedom and calm,that is, waves, that is, space where, when there,you consist of pure freedom, which, seen,turns that Gorgon, the crowd, to stone,to pebbles and sand . . . where life's mean-ing lies buried, that never let onecome within cannon shot yet.From cloud-covered wells untoldpour color and light, a feteof cupids and Ledas in gold.That is, silk and honey and sheen.That is, boon and quiver and call.That is, all that lives to be free,needing no words at all.
Regina Derieva
The color of the flower has faded, while I lost myself in idle thought in this long rain / 花の色は うつりにけりな いたづらに わが身世にふる ながめせし間に
Ono no Komachi
JESUS Woke up in a white veilThe fog sets the silence in my handsI think back to my thoughtsAbout the peopleI'm thinkingWith increasing pain in my headPeople who have condemned meDark hourinthe hoursAnd I would now complain quietlyBut there is no furyAnd there is no sadnessThe time has melted away like water in the seaTearsofthe womenThey are covered with cloudsLet my heart bleed to deathAmong the thornsatlastThere is no sun in the zenith
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
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;
Robert Frost
With chilling care, my hardshipshave managed to implant a spiritof recklessness within me,one that impels me to point out injustice and wrongdoing.So, while many strive to have a toil free life, I spend my time criticizing tyrants,and so the spirit of subversion was quickly established within me. Now all I can do is calmly wait for cold death to seize me.
Alcaeus of Mytilene
I have lost you, my brotherAnd your death has ended The spring seasonOf my happiness, our house is buried with youAnd buried the laughter that you taught me.There are no thoughts of love nor of poemsIn my head Since you died.
Catullus
We have all seen them circling pastures, have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing, the fences of our own backyards, and have stood amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift. But I had never seen so many so close, every limb of the dead oak feathered black; and I cut the engine let the river grab the jon boat and pull it toward the tree... Then as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time its soft countenance the raw fleshy jowls, wrinkled and generous like the faces of the very old who have grown to empathize with everything. And I drifted away from them, reluctant, looking back at their roost, calling them what they are- transfiguring angels who pray over the leaf graves of the anonymous lost with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.
David Bottoms
You do know, right,that between the no-longer & the still-to-comeyou are being continuallytattooed, inkedwith the skulls ofeveryoneyou’ve ever loved—the you& the you& the you & the you—you don’tsit in a chair, thumbthrough a binder, pick adesign, it simplyhappens each time youbring your fingers to your faceto inhale him back into you . . .tiny skulls, some of us arecovered. You, love, couldsimply tattoo an opendoor, lightpouring in from somewhereoutside, youcould make your body a doorso it appears you(let her fill you) are madeof light.
Nick Flynn
The poem says you only think you’re alive but about to be born your radioactive heliographs mock the moon’s tongue.”— Philip Lamantia, “Fin Del Mundo
Philip Lamantia
I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Be Vast, Solitary, Down to Earth and Firm
Sohrâb Sepehrî
Sound.Noisethe air employs.Melodies sweet.Tweet, tweet, tweet.Soft. Loud.A roaring crowd.Cluck. Caw. Crow.Tet, tet. Tis, tis.Guttural growl.Harrowing howl.Drip, drip, drip.Tap, tap, tap.Moan and groan.Endless drone.Ding, dang, dong.A church bell song.Vibrations in my earto hear.Sound.
Richelle E. Goodrich
I slay dragons at night while you sleep. I see by the way your face contorts how they exist in your dreams. Willing a magic sword, I plunge into your deepest nightmares and swing at the beasts with all my might, dodging flames exhaled by monsters that would eat me alive to go on torturing the fair one I love. I see your face relax, eyes still drowsily closed, when the mighty dragon is slain. It may be that my fingers rub soft circles on your forehead as I imagine my brave fight as a knight reclaiming your dreams. You smile under the spell of my touch, and I am rewarded. And so, my love, as I await the dawn, I stand ready to slay dragons while you sleep.
Richelle E. Goodrich
No. Not really red,but the color of a rose when it bleeds.
Anne Sexton
Life writes the poetry, but it will always call for witnesses and scribes alike to tattoo its echoes upon the ghosts of trees.
Ged Thompson ~Poet
Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don’t regret those. Not the nights you called god names and cursed your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,b chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness. You were meant to inhale those smoky nights over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches. You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here. Regret none of it, not one of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing, when the lights from the carnival rides were the only stars you believed in, loving them for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved. You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.
Dorianne Laux
Those lips that Love's own hand did makeBreathed forth the sound that said, 'I hate'To me that languished for her sake,But, when she saw my woeful state,Straight in her heart did mercy come,Chiding that tongue that ever sweetWas used in giving gentle doom,And taught it thus anew to greet:'I hate,' she altered with an endThat followed it as gentle dayDoth follow night, who like a fiendFrom Heaven to Hell is flown away.'I hate' from hate away she threwAnd saved my life, saying 'not you'.
William Shakespeare
Never durst a poet touch a pen to writeUntil his ink was tempered with love's sighs.
William Shakespeare
beware women grownoldwho were neveranything butyoung
Charles Bukowski
I always felt it wouldpass.I listened to the charges against meknowing some of them to be truebut certainly notimportant enoughto become the target ofviolence, envy,vengeance.I thought it would surelypass.
Charles Bukowski
Dancing to the sounds of trees and stones and slow minutes ticking in our hearts and bones.
Jay Woodman
unrequited love is likekneeling on uncooked riceand waiting for the boiling water of his kissesto soften the painbut he never comes.
K.Y. Robinson
our foundation is rockybecause we made a home in each other’s skin.the damage is beginning to show.
K.Y. Robinson
i knew his heart was yours but i wanted to become an alchemist to make gold of the pieces i receivedbecause all i ever felt was the dark side of his leaded heart.
K.Y. Robinson