Poetry Quotes

Over the mountain growths, disease and sorrow,t An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,High in the purer, happier air.

I don’t need your praiseto survive. I was here first, before you were here, beforeyou ever planted a garden.And I’ll be here when only the sun and moonare left, and the sea, and the wide field.I will constitute the field.

Maybe the entire world is in love with you and I'm the only one brave enough to admit it.

Tonight, I decided to take a stroll down to my local liquor store. Maybe I’ll find a refreshment to wash down this full moon. I hate showing up & the clerk fucking knows my name, perhaps because I’m a regular. Anyways got my shit, left…barely covering the tax. Took the long way home; to get away from that haunting typewriter. Sat down at some park bench, as I started to open my poison; A memory rushed into me. A empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s under the Christmas tree. I thought my dad would want another drink, so started to pour my bottle into the dirt & cried.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)i am never without it(anywherei go you go,my dear;and whatever is doneby only me is your doing,my darling)

For you may palm upon us new for old:All, as they say, that glitters, is not gold.

When your heart starts to feel full again. I love FREE refills, and if a restaurant tries to double charge me, I refuse to write a love poem on their Yelp page.-Karen Quan and Jarod Kintz

Poetry is an orphan of silence.

I believe that open-heart surgery is a mustfor all human beings

Carry good cheer in the morning;Carry good cheer in the night.Effort is sweeter and living completer,If ever we walk in love's light.

I finally wentwhere everyone goesand I realizedI wasnevermissingout.

I have no life but this, To lead it here; Nor any death, but lest Dispelled from there; Nor tie to earths to come, Nor action new, Except through this extent, The realm of you.

I began composing the next poem, the one that was to be written next. Not the last poem of those I had read, but the poem written in the head of someone who may never have existed but who had certainly written another poem nonetheless, and just never had the chance to commit it to ink and the page.

And I or you pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth.

Strangers are endearing because you don’t know them yet.

When you left you left behind a fieldof silent flowers under a sky full of unstirred clouds...you left a million butterfliesmid-silky flutters You left like midnight rain against my dreaming ears Oh and how you left leaving my coffee scentless and my couch comfortless leaving upon my fingers the melting snow of you you left behind a calendar full of empty days and seasons full of aimless wanders leaving me alone with an armful of sunsets your reflection behind in every puddle your whispersupon every curtain your fragranceinside every petal you left your echoes in between the silence of my eyes Oh and how you leftleaving my sands footless and my shores songless leaving me with windows full of moistened moonlight nights and nightsof only a half-warmed soul and when you left... you left behind a lifetime of moments untouched the light of a million starsunshed and when you left you somehowleft my poem...unfinished. (Published in Taj Mahal Review Vol.11Number 1 June 2012)

Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition, read the dry sardonic remarks of cynical philosophers like Cioran or even Carl Schmitt, read newspapers, read those who despise, dismiss or simply ignore poetry and try to understand why they do it. Read your enemies, read those who reinforce your sense of what's evolving in poetry, and also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are.

...How terrible, those dreams before sleep were—the worse kind, mixing hope with despair...

Even so have I given the womb of the earth to those that be sown in it in their times.

Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind;In the primal sympathyWhich having been must ever be...

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger stripes and lepard spots.

My words are my children. I am eternally grateful to the womb of my mind for conceiving them.

So small footprint yet the shovelling jealous sea has not erased it.You were for me the necessary exemplary figure of dedication and endurance. Whatever your inner life truly was it was ardently pursued. You observed with acute imagination. When you spoke you drove to the heart of things though sometimes through wry indirection. You manifested the value of the life dedicated to an art. Whatever terrors you underwent they may have been very great you did not evince them. You were never indecent.Of course in making this thing about you or around you I am talking about my youth and homesick for it. But that is not the point. The point is that at one time in one place I met someone who became to me a living conscience.

I am stuffing your mouth with yourpromises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.

Be my lover between two wars waged in the mirror, she said.I don't want to return now to the fortress of my father's house.Take me to your vineyard.Let me meet your mother.Perfume me with basil water.Arrange me on silver dishes, comb me, imprison me in your name,let love kill me.

Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes it’s shit.These are the things all the great philosophersjust won’t tell you flat out about life. You keep moving, keep living, keep breathingAnd you keep writing-creating because that’s what you doAnd that’s who you are. There are no magical voices to guideYou except your own. Make it count.~ R.M. ENGELHARDT

sometimes i am not sure.if i am writing the poemor the poemis writing me.

Try to be thoughtful, don't make the poor man say it;see how human he is,he has children of his own,it is your job to ask:And now he can never not nod.And now he can never say no.And now he can never not say.

A wealth you cannot imagineflows through you.Do not consider what strangers say.Be secluded in your secret heart-house,that bowl of silence.

There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands awayNor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest takeWithout oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears a Human soul.

That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love.

The Peace of Wild ThingsWhen despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting with their light. For a timeI rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Maybe what this is. What we have, is something that will save us from ourselves.

Title: Blue Light Lounge Sutra For The Performance Poets At Harold Park Hotelthe need gotta beso deep words can'tanswer simple questionsall night long notesstumble off the tongue& color the air indigoso deep fragments of gut& flesh cling to the songyou gotta get into itso deep salt crystalizes on eyelashesthe need gotta beso deep you can vomit up ghosts& not feel brokentill you are no morethan a half ounce of goldin painful brightnessyou gotta get into itblow that saxophoneso deep all the sex & dope in this worldcan't erase your needto howl against the skythe need gotta beso deep you can'tjust wiggle your hips& rise up out of itchaos in the cosmosmodern man in the pepperpotyou gotta get hookedinto every hungry grooveso deep the bomb lockedin rust opens like a fistinto it into it so deeprhythm is pre-memorythe need gotta be basicanimal need to see& know the terrorwe are made of honeycause if you wanna dancethis boogie be readyto let the devil use your headfor a drum

I believein love at first sightbut I will always believe that the peoplewe lovewe have loved before.Many, many, many times beforeand when we stumblethrough grace and circumstance and that brilliant illusion of choiceto finally meet them again, we feel it fastereach time through.The one glance that set life alightis two sets of two eyesstaring through the layersof lifetimes and stolen glancesand first kisses and hands held;the brace against the weight and unrelenting tideof waiting.I believein love at first sightbut am not burdened with the misconceptionthat it's a first sightat all.

... the silenceHolds with its gloved handThe wild hawk of the mind.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unlessSoul clap its hands and sing, and louder singFor every tatter in its mortal dress

A robin redbreast in a cagePuts all heaven in a rage.A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeonsShudders hell thro' all its regions.A dog starv'd at his master's gatePredicts the ruin of the state.A horse misused upon the roadCalls to heaven for human blood.Each outcry of the hunted hareA fibre from the brain does tear.A skylark wounded in the wing,A cherubim does cease to sing.The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fightDoes the rising sun affright.Every wolf's and lion's howlRaises from hell a human soul.- "Auguries of Innocence

I will Basquiat the canvas of your body like a Broadway Junction wall…and Gordon Parks you for those dark midnights when your scent fades.

People are looking for chimes and resonances. Chimes leave echoes, and that's what rhyme is. Poetry is about leaving an echo imprint in somebody else's head, in the dark snow of their mind.

Instead of imitating me, you simply loiter.

A scar on the heart will heal. Let your love remain pure as if it was never cut in the first place.

for every mile the feet gothe heart goes nine

Leave the hush to those who love like apes because together, you and I make vulgar sounds like a fervent sojourn in paradise.

Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove.O no, it is an ever-fixed markThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wand'ring bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be t

I am a ghost,Living in ethereal thoughts.

There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money.

The words of the true poems give you more than poems, they give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, & everything else, they balance the ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes, they do not seek beauty, they are sought, forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick. They prepare for death, yet they are not the finish, but rather the outset, they bring none of his or her terminus or to be content & full, whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of the stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings & never be quiet again.

Not everything can be felt and not everything will be ever understood.

The skies bend, the time stops, the lanes move and the fires dance,It can mean only one thing that I am with you.You are enigmatic yet so beautiful that I have lost my sense, You are as immaculate as the unadulterated morning dew And your beauty leaves me in a mystified trance.I do not foresee what you and I will beBut I promise to be with you till the rocks keep meeting the sea.

Poetry is Life. We experience poetry from the time we awake each morning and inhale that fresh breath of air. You are living poetry. Poetry is not defined by the laws of man. Inspiration is the key.

Is it possible to write a poem or are these words just screams of outlaws exiled to the desert?

I just need you and some sunsets. 

At any moment, you know, your manufactured cool could blow.

Life. This morning the sun made me adore it. It had, behind the dripping pine trees, the oriental brightness, orange and crimson, of a living being, a rose and an apple, in the physical and ideal fusion of a true and daily paradise.

Waldo nodded and waved goodbye pathetically, like a young father going off to war. tAs soon as the door was closed and he was gone, Jeanne squelched her own apprehensions, opened the paper and read the poem Waldo had written for her:One taste of Jeanne and out I flewWildly, madly, in no directionBut hers, and yet so straight and trueI fly towards her with no protectionIt feels so strange to move this wayThough I should land, desire it seemsMoves in strange circles and so I stayDisoriented beyond my wildest dreams.

Reluctant hero, drafted again each Fourthof July, I'll bow and remember you. Whoshall we follow next? Who shall we killnext time?

Some poems are written great, some poems are written swell. But then there are poems that could win a prize in Hell.

I stood in your doorway this morningdreaming you’d turn aroundyou’d tilt your headyou’d softly whisper ”stay”or that you’d grab my armsto shake me while askingwhat the hell are we doingwe loveeach otherand this is not rightso we will make this worknow stay!You poured your coffee. Stirred the spoon like a crystal manwith your back to me and not a sound. the fridge humming elegies while the clock ticked onand the streets are so clean here people rushing to workand maybe I should be tooby nowat this agethis stagethis town.I will stand in that doorway dreamingfor many nights to come.

LightLightThe visible reminder of Invisible Light.