Poetry Quotes - Page 3

Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.

My mom’s smile is genuine,A lilac beamingIn the presence of her Sun.Indentions in the sand proveTime’s linear progression,Her hair yet unblighted,Carrying midnight’s consistency.Clear tracks fading as theMovement slips furtherIn the past.CheekbonesHigh, soft,In summer’s hue,Hopeful.Each step’s unknown impact,A future looking back.My father’s strength:One whoseLife is in his arms.Squinting past the camera,He rests upon a rockLike caramel corn half eaten,Just to the leftOf man-made concrete conventionDaylight’s eraserRemoving color to his right.Dustin sitsIn my father’s lap,Open mouth of a droolingBig mouth bass;Muscle toneOf a well exercisedJelly fish,He looks at meHalf aware;His wheelchairPerched at the edgeOf parking lot gravel graftedLike a scar on nature’s beach,Opening to the ironic splendorOf a bitter tasting lake.I took the picture.Age 11.Capturing the pinnacle arcOf a sonTo my lilacWhoOutlived him and weeps,Still.Their sky has staple holes –Maybe that’s how theLightLeaked out.

In a tired time, with the light outside drifting away for another day and the lights inside flickering as they come to life, I cup my hands together and prepare to give thanks ... to the life of a day given to me. A day shared with past and present, living and dying, of body and not, and a realization that in everything that is, there is something that was.

I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.

If you are a dreamer come inIf you are a dreamer a wisher a liarA hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyerIf youre a pretender com sit by my fireFor we have some flax golden tales to spinCome in! Come in!

Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed.

That tingle in the brain is called a word.It bats itself against its fleshy bounds.

You push the TRUTH off a cliff, but it will always fly. You can submerge the TRUTH under water, but it will not drown. You can place the TRUTH in the fire, but it will survive. You can bury the TRUTH beneath the ground, but it will arise. TRUTH always prevails!

why be bothered with other people's set-ups? it only leads to torture.

sweet spring is yourtime is my time is ourtime for springtime is lovetimeand viva sweet love(all the merry little birds areflying in the floating in thevery spirits singing inare winging in the blossoming)lovers go and lovers comeawandering awonderingbut any two are perfectlyalone there's nobody else alive(such a sky and such a suni never knew and neither did youand everybody never breathedquite so many kinds of yes)not a tree can count his leaveseach herself by openingbut shining who by thousands meanonly one amazing thing(secretly adoring shylytiny winging darting floatingmerry in the blossomingalways joyful selves are singing)sweet spring is yourtime is my time is ourtime for springtime is lovetimeand viva sweet love

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

…how it would be nice if, for every sea waiting for us, there would be a river, for us. And someone -a father, a lover, someone- able to take us by the hand and find that river -imagine it, invent it- and put us on its stream, with the lightness of one only word, goodbye. This, really, would be wonderful. It would be sweet, life, every life. And things wouldn’t hurt, but they would get near taken by stream, one could first shave and then touch them and only finally be touched. Be wounded, also. Die because of them. Doesn’t matter. But everything would be, finally, human. It would be enough someone’s fancy -a father, a lover, someone- could invent a way, here in the middle of the silence, in this land which don’t wanna talk. Clement way, and beautiful.A way from here to the sea.

I am at the gates of my own destruction.(Or so I'm told.)

Registration Day' by Gavin Gunhold (1899— ) Toronto Review of Poetry, 1947On registration day at taxidermy schoolI distinctly saw the eyes of the stuffed mooseMove.

Such hungry desperation in a single kiss when it's enamored in love and bathed in bliss.

Poems, even when narrative, do not resemble stories. All stories are about battles, of one kind or another, which end in victory or defeat. Everything moves towards the end, when the outcome will be known.Poems, regardless of any outcome, cross the battlefields, tending the wounded, listening to the wild monologues of the triumphant or the fearful. They bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been. Yet the promise is not of a monument. (Who, still on a battlefield, wants monuments?) The promise is that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experience which demanded, which cried out.

How I'm glad to go back home!Once I truly have no more worry. Many of those who are in a hurry Endure setbacks in the outcome.

No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

When the melody plays, footsteps move, heart sings and spirit begin to dance.

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls, must dive below.

Destroy thefear in youbefore thefear destroysthe lifebefore you.

She asks me silly questions. Like how much do I love her?I smile and look at the sky for how do I tell her that it is she who gives me my existence...

The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere we would dive for pearls. My lover’s wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lips; my body now a softer rhymeto his, now echo, assonance; his toucha verb dancing in the centre of a noun.Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the beda page beneath his writer’s hands. Romanceand drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -I hold him in the casket of my widow’s headas he held me upon that next bes

I stepped from Plank to PlankSo slow and cautiouslyThe Stars about my Head I felt,About my Feet the Sea.I knew not but the nextWould be my final inch —This gave me that precarious GaitSome call Experience.

But tears are an indulgence. Memory sings.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoopin the oats, to air in the lunglet evening come.Let it come, as it will, and don'tbe afraid. God does not leave uscomfortless, so let evening come.

i am permanentlytannedin the summer of poetry.

Hers is a timeless life weaving through other longer lives like a flash of lightning in a clouded evening sky.

A rebel to what’s cool, I don't follow trends, maybe that’s why I don't have many friends, but I know my destination.

Maybe all that we are is what people expect us to be.

If you find yourself still clinging to every feeling you thought was lost forever... Maybe, just maybe, it's the only place you can be found.

The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows, Are proud and implacable, passionate foes;It is always the same, wherever one goes.And the Pugs and the Poms, although most people saythat they do not like fighting, will often displayEvery symptom of wanting to join in the fray.And theyBark bark bark bark bark barkUntil you can hear them all over the park.

Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.

Early mapmakers kept their backs to the sea

Love does not pay attention to timetables or knock when it is convenient for you. True love shows up unexpectedly, bags fully packed, daring you to offer it a place to stay.

There is such a shelter in each other.

Even through the smoke,you are still the most beautiful thingin this city and I, well, I am stillthe last thing you’d save in a fire.

I was burdened with an ever-growing heart on the verge of decay. To save myself, I had to give many pieces of my love away. I hope I can give it all to someone, someday.

you clutter my mindthoughts of you, thoughts of me with youthoughts that keep me from restthat ull me to sleep at nightyour words are like butterthey're smooth and they're richand they make the bitter bits better

The grain of evil seed had been sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning, and how much ungodliness had it brought up unto this time? and how much shall it yet bring forth until the time of threshing come?

When following God, Zero we never find.

I see specks of the Universe in your eyes.A body of stardustthat gives me a high.And when we make lovethe stars shine brighter than usual.When we lie there holding each other, I see love making us.

I mostly hope you think I miss you and in the end you hope you'll get me, but that's fantasy, untrue as you, and bitter as the hope you left me.

When my worldwas nothing but darknessI set my soul on fire.

I said: 'A line will take us hours maybe;Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Look upward to himLook upward on our goalKeep your eyes on himLook upward to him

O, how this spring of love resemblethThe uncertain glory of an April day,Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,And by and by a cloud takes all away!

Now you may hear songs of kindness From every singing bird And from every dancing heart Let kindness be the part of your being

At first I protested and rebelled against poetry. I was about to deny my poetic worlds. I was doing violence to my illusions with analysis, science, and learning Henry’s language, entering Henry’s world. I wanted to destroy by violence and animalism my tenuous fantasies and illusions and my hypersensitivity. A kind of suicide. The ignominy awakened me. Then June came and answered the cravings of my imagination and saved me. Or perhaps she killed me, for now I am started on a course of madness.

ACTS OF LOVELove is not a wordOr a thought.It is the name forAn actionThat breathes from its light.What do you DOIn Love's name?And is it only doneOutside In the light?Or with an innerFlameIlluminatingLove'sTRUEName?I want to know.Are your actionsDone by remoteOr withSOUL?And when you sayYou love someone,Does a light go offInside at all?What haveYOUDoneIn theName ofLOVE?Because,Really,I want to know.

Starlight encased in flesh. Fire burning in so much water. Poetry living in hard spaces. oh, how the body loves

that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)

...always-the sharp,plaintive edgeon the rimof the spoonof my giving.(lines 8-13 of the poem 'Confessions')

I blind myself to see the bright fireplace radiating skin piercing warmth. The yellow illuminating a lonely light that unites with the red to create an ambiance so comforting. They burn and hush, they rise and fall, they breath and devour together in synch; creating a bond, a bond thicker than blood, forged by love and held together by an insurmountable friendship. You cannot separate them, you'll burn. She is red, he is yellow and they are fire

I'm like the weather, never really can predict when this rain cloud's gonna burst; when it's the high or it's the low, when you might need a light jacket.Sometimes I'm the slush that sticks to the bottom of your work pants, but I can easily be the melting snowflakes clinging to your long lashes.I know that some people like:sunny and seventy-five,sunny and seventy-five,sunny and seventy-five,but you take me as I am and neverforget to pack an umbrella.

Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.

On the canvas of life,Every sweep of the brush matters,Counts for something…

A tired man lay down his headin a dusty room so dim,and for so long his wife did shakeand yell to waken him.Meanwhile his thoughts, his dreams, did stirof sandy, red bullfights,of powder-blasts in the airand carnival delights.Yet still his wife was in despairin a dusty room so dim,for she knew death was a whorenot far from tempting him.

How do I learn to speakwhen silence is all I know?