Poetry Quotes - Page 114

You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can't express, and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn't hurt any more: that's my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them.

This year has taught me the simple craft of belief. I believe in the things I’ve nurtured and built this year. Slowly but carefully. Such as understanding, knowledge, passion, strength; the hundreds of songs I’ve written, the 365 poems, the books I’ve read and the miles I’ve run. The resolution to breathe, to meditate, to not harm my mind or body even when I’ve felt like it. 

I read old poems I wrote. They were all about you.

some see things as they are: others as they are” (p.82) ~CXCI

Like the number nineeternity is forever mine

She's burning and out of control and everything I love about fire.

But usually not. Usually she thinks of the path to his house, whether deer had eaten the tops of the fiddleheads, why they don't eat the peppermint saprophytes sprouting along the creek; or she visualizes the approach to the cabin, its large windows, the fuchsias in front of it where Anna's hummingbirds always hover with dirty green plumage and jeweled throats. Sometimes she thinks about her dream, the one in which her mother wakes up with no hands. The cabin smells of oil paint, but also of pine. The painter's touch is sexual and not sexual, as she herself is....When the memory of that time came to her, it was touched by strangeness because it formed no pattern with the other events in her life. It lay in her memory like one piece of broken tile, salmon-coloured or the deep green of wet leaves, beautiful in itself but unusable in the design she was making

When Hitler marched across the RhineTo take the land of France,La dame de fer decided,‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’Let him take the land and city,The hills and every flower,One thing he will never have,The elegant Eiffel Tower.The French cut the cables,The elevators stood still,‘If he wants to reach the top,Let him walk it, if he will.’The invaders hung a swastikaThe largest ever seen.But a fresh breeze blewAnd away it flew,Never more to be seen.They hung up a second mark,Smaller than the first,But a patriot climbedWith a thought in mind:‘Never your duty shirk.’Up the iron ladyHe stealthily made his way,Hanging the bright tricolour,He heroically saved the day.Then, for some strange reason,A mystery to this day,Hitler never climbed the tower,On the ground he had to stay.At last he ordered she be razedDown to a twisted pile.A futile attack, for still she standsBeaming her metallic smile.

I say, flawless poems do not exist.

Poetry is never abandon it is only remixed.

Don't worry— tyou see, to some you are magic.

I'm a peasantI'm the muzhikA pest you're destined to play the musicAnd yes it's pleasant to say it's beauty I'mIndebted to rest respecting it truly

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

purple threaded evening. a torn goddess laying on the roof. milk sky. lavender hued moan against hot asphalt. the thickness of evening presses into your throat. polaroids taped to the ceiling. ivy pouring out of the cracks in the wall. i found my courage buried beneath molding books and forgot to lock the door behind me. the old house never forgets. opened my mouth and a dandelion fell out. reached behind my wisdom teeth and found sopping wet seeds. pulled all of my teeth out just to say i could. he drowned himself in a pill bottle and the orange really brought out his demise. lay me down on a bed of ground spices. there’s a song there, i know it. amethyst geode eyes. cracked open. no one saw it coming. october never loved you. the moon still doesn’t understand that.

But you must know that only he who fights the darkness within will the day after tomorrow have his own share in the sun.

Humankind must no longer permit the lie to be taught to its children.

I was lost in the moments I decided to keep. To be awake in a dreamless sleep. And in that place between dream and sleep, I planted some more things I would like to keep.

Art doesn’t give rise to anything in us that isn’t already there. It simply stirs our curious consciousness and sparks a fire that illuminates who we have always wanted to be.

Because at nightwhen others are sleeping, I drown myself in poetry.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

To be human is to be broken and broken is its own kind of beautiful.

By daily dying, I have come to be.

[Y]ou, one day, will knock lips with Turkish-coffee-clad veils whose beds our kin must tuck in misty-eyed.

Come play with my wild - I need my hair pulled, my lips kissed, your tender caress. I need your savage, I need your gentle. Only you know how to embrace my fire, the secrets I desire. Come play with my wild and I'll love you like there's no tomorrow.

Two girls discover the secret of lifein a sudden line of poetry.

Poetry is an attempt to penetrate the dense reality to find a place where the simplest things look as new as through the eyes of a child.

DANCE – Defeat All Negativity (via) Creative Expression.

Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willow. May came too soon, and suddenly unable to bear walls, he wandered the campus at all hours through starlight and rain.

Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr.

On Paper*some call it poetrybut it is just painon paper_____________________rassool jibraeel snyman (c) 2015"The Poetic Assassin

Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.I want to believe I am lookinginto the white fire of a great mystery.I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—that the light is everything—that it is more than the sumof each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.

These aren't still shots; the camera is always moving. And the scene is always just slipping out of sight, as if in spite of myself I were always descending a hill, rounding a corner, stepping into the street with a companion who urges me on, while I look back over my shoulder at the sight which recedes, vanishes. The present of my consciousness is itself a mystery which is also always just rounding a bend like a floating branch borne by a flood. Where am I? But I'm not. "I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more. . . .

I climb the door instead of a treeJust to crawl with myself walking freeWhat if I’m a lizard beneath my skinChanging my colours of the human I’ve been

I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.

But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!

...It's not that the worm forgives the plough; it gives it no mind. (Pain occurs, in passing.) (lines 37-39 in the poem 'Fantasia on a Theme from IKEA')

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

There's no money in poetry but then there's no poetry in money either.

The artistic creation of the poet, painter, photographer, and writer is a reflection of the artist’s inner world. The agenda of consciousness that spurs all forms of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but to portray its inward significance to the creator. A great poem, painting, photograph, and written composition fully express what the creator feels, in the deepest sense, about the distinctively depicted image that captured their imagination.

There is a whisper of light if you can hear Louder than sound of darknessyou never fear Numb sky’s muteness leaves you hard of hearingSenses wish to fly feelings disappearing

What the theologian shrinks from, the poet grasps intuitively.

To shew thee such tokens I have leave; and if thou wilt pray again, and weep as now, and fast even days, thou shall hear yet greater things.

There is safety in numbness– there is solace in sleep.

The more I learned the less I felt I knew you and I got lost counting stars, I fell dreaming. Sometimes I’d wander away. Maybe I wasn’t ready or maybe it was just a hard time to love. You always reminded me of home and I could never fathom the reasoning behind your smile. Perhaps one day, if we believe enough, we’ll find our way.

i am alwaysstalking you, my dear. with my thoughtsmy words.my breath.

More or Less Love Poems #11:No babeWe'd neverSwing together butthe syncopationwould be something wild

Science ask facts and religion ask faith, humans are confused between life and death.

In this life at least,Our fate is rarely epic.Maybe just as well,Impervious heroes we are not…

The world deprived of clear-cut outlines, of the up and the down, of good and evil, succumbs to a peculiar nihilization, that is, it loses its colors, so that grayness covers not only things of this earth and of space, but also the very flow of time, its minutes, days and years. Abstract considerations will be of little help, even if they are intended to bring relief. Poetry is quite different. By its very nature it says: All those theories are untrue. Since poetry deals with the singular, not hte general, it can't - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom or complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness.

No drowning man can know which dropOf water his last breath did stop

She was mined for the childrenin her, one daughter, then another, a short seam, quick to clay, and not a single son to save them.

my boy? he is evenbetter than books. -fiction has nothing on you.

I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is.

You can't break up with a soul mate.

let my heart always belike it is...this very momentready to explode...with lovea violent rainstorm...with no streamno ocean vast enoughto flow into.

Ninth Floorshe ran across the parquet slipped the flokati matcrashed the windownoshe stood at the window prism looked up at sky bruise nightspread hernoshe tilted dived swanning spinningtip-toed ink air broke fingers firstnoshe climbed the small gap the window gavehung her finger joints clotted the view with frightened breathfell ligament torn and sorrynoshe wandered to the glass hatch to watch tranquilised lights sputteringleaned too hard fell faster than a bottle of Jacknothis is how it was:drunk screaming she crashed the parquet with griefroared the ungiving window frames which gaveshe spangled spaghetti-like ribbon-voicedstreet lights crashed on herno.She did nothing.

They say, poetry is dead. I say, was there ever a time they had a clue of what the state of poetry is?

The same word we love and hate, leaves in different directions, taking different paths.

Some people spend their whole lives seeking heaven, when all they needed to do was look about them, and embrace that which was already there.

Neither pathway is correct.