Verse Quotes

Give me a moment I am preparing to drawback to screamLouder than a train overhead below a railroad bridge

Let my toes teach the shore how to feel a tranquil lifethrough the wetness of sands Let my heart latch the doorof blackness, as all my pain now blue sky understands

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.Deuteronomy 30:19-20 (NIV)

What is this lovethat makes me see beauty,and makes every beautiful thing bring you back to me?What is this lovethat makes me declare 'I love you'even though I uttered itonly a moment ago?What is this love that keeps growing even when my chest is soreand it hurts to love you any more?Tell me:How am I to find what this love iswhen it was the one to find you, me, this verse, and this universe?

Starlight beats when heart twinklesYouthful sky beyond cloudy wrinklesMuse of glory to flame the nightVerse inscribed as written light

You are more likely to find three TVs inside a randomly selected house than you are to find a single book that is or was not read to pass an exam, to please God, or to be a better cook.

Poetry isn’t an island, it is the bridge. Poetry isn’t a ship, it is the lifeboat. Poetry isn’t swimming. Poetry is water.

Night after night on starry wingsNight lovers soared so highMiles apart, across the oceansTheir love forgot to sighIn heavenly flight’s timelessnessThat highest height treasuredInto the deepest of all bluesTheir depth of love measured.From the poem 'The Ballad of Night Lovers

I could simply kill you now, get it over with, who would know the difference? I could easily kick you in, stove you under, for all those times, mean on gin, you rammed words into my belly. (p. 52)

These (Shakespeare, Milton, and Victor Hugo) not only knit and knot the logical texture of the style with all the dexterity and strength of prose; they not only fill up the pattern of the verse with infinite variety and sober wit; but they give us, besides, a rare and special pleasure, by the art, comparable to that of counterpoint, with which they follow at the same time, and now contrast, and now combine, the double pattern of the texture and the verse.  Here the sounding line concludes; a little further on, the well-knit sentence; and yet a little further, and both will reach their solution on the same ringing syllable.  The best that can be offered by the best writer of prose is to show us the development of the idea and the stylistic pattern proceed hand in hand, sometimes by an obvious and triumphant effort, sometimes with a great air of ease and nature.  The writer of verse, by virtue of conquering another difficulty, delights us with a new series of triumphs.  He follows three purposes where his rival followed only two; and the change is of precisely the same nature as that from melody to harmony.-ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE

once ruffle-skirted vanity table where I primped at thirteen, opening drawers to a private chaos of eyeshadows lavender teal sky-blue, swarms of hair pins pony tail fasteners, stashes of powders, colonies of tiny lipsticks (p.39)

All that can best be expressed in words should be expressed in verse, but verse is a slow thing to create; nay, it is not really created: it is a secretion of the mind, it is a pearl that gathers round some irritant and slowly expresses the very essence of beauty and of desire that has lain long, potential and unexpressed, in the mind of the man who secretes it. God knows that this Unknown Country has been hit off in verse a hundred times...Milton does it so well in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost that I defy any man of a sane understanding to read the whole of that book before going to bed and not to wake up next morning as though he had been on a journey.

If I die today, will you remember me tomorrow?The love I'm leaving behind, will you care to borrow? From a snake-shed-skin or from the sky unknownIn all living and the dead I'll dwell to groan

Sealing your lips makes your eyes talk Truth creeps beneath your lame feet’s walk Knees stiffen when blood vessels stalk A pounding heart’s lies hard as rock

Science have proof that women talk more than men, it's a fact.

oh. she heard it too-no waters coursing, canyon empty, sun soundless- and the beast your life nowhere hiding (p. 103)

Tizzy squawked, and he bounced like a ball on the floor. “I completely forgot; Santa said something more.He said that a book gives your very thoughts wings,That carry you off to see wonderful things,That lift you aloft, throughout time, throughout spaceTo every era and every place!

Cannot it actually be that in a wildly literal sense, unacceptable to one's reason, he meant disappearing in his art, dissolving in his verse, thus leaving of himself, of his nebulous person, nothing but verse?

That such a slave as this should wear a sword,Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwainWhich are too intrinse t' unloose; smooth every passionThat in the natures of their lords rebel,Being oil to the fire, snow to the colder moods,Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaksWith every gale and vary of their mastersKnowing naught, like dogs, but following.

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so the the body of sin might be brought to nothing, that we should no longer be enslaved to sin.

...citizens of the U.S. live under an Empire of “evil doers” who have set themselves juxtaposed to humanity instilling in us from our youngest days how to slay our human element in exchange for an external existence of malnourished pride.

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

I only wrote prose before I met you. My musings were superfluous and serious as well. But now the words dance with me. I sing with them and we create poetry.

Be careful, darling. Your footsteps land heavy here. Your racket will wake the dragons.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

Sitting makes us think of standingOur current stance keeps on demanding We wish to fly without the wings Puppets move before pulling the strings

I’m alone with the ghost of the swamp, somewhere near the weeping willows.

Belief In Self""If you quit while pursuing your dreams, you will never know how close you've come to success. It might have been hidden behind that next door you decided not to open, since the last fifty doors revealed little or nothing.

I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.

One thing you cannot know: The sudden extinction of every alternative, The unexpected crash of the iron cataract. You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope: You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you Or to fling it away, to join the legion of the hopeless Unrecognized by other men, though sometimes by each other.

I am looking at him, I am witnessing a unique physiological phenomenon: John Shade perceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, re-combining its elements in the very process of storing them up so as to produce at some unspecified date an organic miracle, a fusion of image and music, a line of verse.

I’ve reached the vanishing point without you.Here my heartache begins with your paintrying to find an unborn startin this fatal disappearanceFrom the poem ‘Me with the Vanishing Point

Thus it is, we sow motions of hatred out of our own impoverished understanding of love. Yet we do so in the name of love. The perplexing precipice of the illusory infirmity.

Sitting in a corner, I live like a toad Oh! How I love my room: my tiny abode! Here I wake up; and I sleep in hereThe world far away; yet virtually near Not that I'm jailed in this place of graceJust don't want to face another face

Your words on the screen are my color palette I dip my brush into your words and paint youOn the sky, on the ceiling, on the snow; on the tabletOf things eternal : love truth beauty happiness

Every morningbefore the birds starttrilling me their stories,I give birth to a new lovethrough my same old heartwhen a lake’s placidityfinds life in the swans breathOnly for you...From the poem 'Only For You

I cannot live to hear the news from England.But I do prophesy th' election lightsOn Fortinbras; he has my dying voice.So tell him, with th' occurents, more and less,Which have solicited - the rest is silence.

When the world uncovers some dark disguise,Embrace the darkness with averted eyes.

And yet methinks the older that one growsInclines us more to laugh than scold, though laughterLeaves us so doubly serious shortly after.

Did I live the spring I’d sought?It’s true in joy, I walked along,took part in dance, and sang the song.and never tried to bind an hourto my borrowed garden bower;nor did I once entreata day to slumber at my feet.Yet days aren’t lulled by lyric song,like morning birds they pass along,o’er crests of trees, to none belong;o’er crests of trees of drying dew,their larking flight, my hands, eschewThus I’ll say it once and true…From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered,I learned that time cannot be spent,It only can be squandered.

No one here gets out alive.

Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

blue-gold sky, fresh cloud, emerald-black mountain, trees on rocky ledges, on the summit, the tiny pin of a telephone tower-all brilliantly clear, in shadow and out. and on and through everything everywhere the sun shines without reservation (p. 97)

In all the flames of fire fume’s left the traceInto the bluest sea the sky is drownedThe miracles of life can you embraceFrom the poem 'Can You Embrace?

Death is buried there into death Hunger strikes on its own last breathNo spine to shiver, no heart talks At life’s craving poverty mocksFrom the poem 'Exhumation

...and when we die we die alone I cry, I cry aloneLike a piece of stone I am thrown into the wavy ocean of lifeto atone...to atoneOnly to atone...

Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.

There lives a weeperin each of us-a silent mourner honoring our despairwhen our willingness slain by helplessness continues to resurrect to be slaughtered again

I started writing poetry and philosophy when I was 17 years old and my mind so was wild. Now I'm 56 and I often want to write like a child.

I left smiles on your wordless lipsThe night roads- dismal and narrow,dream’s path remains shadowy wideas our lone hearts felt that arrowFrom the Poem 'My Tomorrow

The atmospheric intensity of two electric lovers is the most righteous place I need to rediscover.

I live not in myself, but I becomePortion of that around me: and to meHigh mountains are a feeling, but the humof human cities torture.

...gripping the rim of the sink you claw your way to stand and cling there, quaking with will, on heron legs, and still the hot muck pours out of you. (p. 27)

Well, the gold fish in the bowl lay upside down bloatingFull in the sky and the plains were bleached white with skeletonsVarious species grouped together accordingTo their past beliefsThe only way they ever all got together wasNot in love but shameful grief

Wings can only flyas long as the bird flies Soul blackens when you put on vestment of lies White candle wax criesfor ignitable wickJealous people burnto make your heart feel sick

Versifying left her cold. Poems were too close to prayer, rousing regrettable passions. Waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you. Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.

In the boundaryless forests, there’re dancers of nude.Yet in the confines of pasture, there’s promise of food.On which is your side?Ô, but tarry and bide,ere you decide,in both do confide.

To be wild as the waves;enshrinedby the vastness—our cosmic immemorial.Unsettled as the forest.An indomitable flickeramidst worldviews,of jaded crownsand romantic ash.

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

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