Best 8159 quotes in «poetry quotes» category

To be happy to be sad and sad to be happy is to sing an echo in that beautiful language called Sorrow.

To be held in his arms I long for that day The da that I get to see more wonderful things

To be loved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.

To be the other woman is to be a season that is always about to end, when the air is flowered with jasmine and peach, and the weather day after day is flawless, and the forecast is hurricane.

To be wild as the waves; enshrined by the vastness— our cosmic immemorial. Unsettled as the forest. An indomitable flicker amidst worldviews, of jaded crowns and romantic ash.

To build a home is to look down, roses stemming from your seams, and say, "Look, I am still alive--in fact, in bloom.

To conquer fear, you must become fear - you must bask in the fear of the BOOK... and men fear most what they cannot see- The Power of the Book is spiritual.

To cut and tighten sentences is the secret of mastery.

To count the stones losing count is the sense of our life: the algebra of our displacements. To follow paths losing sense is the circumvolution, the evolution: the logic of our moments. But. No. There is no symmetry in our acts. Never the chance of steps that surprise us to salt. Our time machine. Forward. Never backward the meat machine. No turning back. No turning back. There is no remedy: death is an incurable asymmetry. Huge is the ticking of the Clock but but our time has the clutch, the vortex the saltwater of a wave that covers us. It reshapes and hollows out the face, like sand robs us of our flesh.

To come up with one great sentence, one needs to serve a life sentence.

To compose poetry is about listening, ...not to contrive, it is, so to speak, about bringing forth something that already exists-this is why when one reads great poetry, when often gets this ‘I-new-all-of-this-already, I-just-didn’t-express-it’ feeling. Language listens to itself.

Today, death is your opponent.

today, i am a black woman in a body of coal i am always burning and no one knows my name i am a nameless fury, i am a blues scratched from the throat of ms. nina—i am always angry i am always a bumble hive of hello i love like this too loudly, my neighbors think i am an unforgiving bitter sometimes, i think my neighbors are right most times i think my neighbors are nosey

Today I write, riots with insite! Tomorrow I read, take the lead! Sometimes I sleep, health to keep! But for now I write, and got no gripe!

Today I want to leave the world I want to leave the pain Leave the heartache I know where it is going I want to see my Savior

Today I introduced myself to my very own Heart, In silent agony, after all these years it bled apart.

Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.

today my heart was ripped in two one half for me, one half for you take a half and keep it near i have mine and will always be here crossing paths before the end once a lover, forever a friend

To-day my skies are bare and ashen, And bend on me without a beam. Since love is held the master-passion, Its loss must be the pain supreme

Today I hate myself for loving you, and I hate myself for not being strong enough to love you back... when I know broken boys like you need me, too.

Today is a trumpet to set the hounds baying. The past is a fox the hunters are flaying. Nothing unspoken goes without saying. Love's a casino where lovers risk playing. The future's a marker our hearts are prepaying. The future's a promise there's no guaranteeing. Today is a fire the field mice are fleeing. Love is a marriage of feeling and being. The past is a mirror for wishful sightseeing. Nothing goes missing without absenteeing. Nothing gets cloven except by dividing. The future is chosen by atoms colliding. The past's an elision forever eliding. Today is a fog bank in which I am hiding. Love is a burn forever debriding. Love's an ascent forever plateauing. Nothing is granted except by bestowing. Today is an anthem the cuckoos are crowing. The future's a convolute river onflowing. The past is a lawn the neighbor is mowing. The past is an answer not worth pursuing, Nothing gets done except by the doing. The future's a climax forever ensuing. Love is only won by wooing. Today is a truce between reaping and rueing.

Today the journey is ended, I have worked out the mandates of fate; Naked, alone, undefended, I knock at the Uttermost Gate. Behind is life and its longing, Its trial, its trouble, its sorrow; Beyond is the Infinite Morning Of a day without a tomorrow. Go back to dust and decay, Body, grown weary and old; You are worthless to me from today— No longer my soul can you hold. I lay you down gladly forever For a life that is better than this; I go where partings ne'er sever You into oblivion's abyss. Lo, the gate swings wide at my knocking, Across endless reaches I see Lost friends with laughter come flocking To give a glad welcome to me. Farewell, the maze has been threaded, This is the ending of strife; Say not that death should be dreaded— 'Tis but the beginning of life.

To dissect a poem as if it were a system is a crime, even a sacrilege.

To discover the source of this alchemical love within is to uncover the deepest secrets of the soul. It is to unearth and align with the ultimate truth of who we are.

to do list (after the breakup) 1. take refuge in your bed 2. cry. till the tears stop (this will take a few days). 3. don’t listen to slow songs. 4. delete their number from your phone even though it is memorized on your fingertips. 5. don’t look at old photos. 6. find the closest ice cream shop and treat yourself to two scoops of mint chocolate chip. the mint will calm your heart. you deserve the chocolate. 7. buy new bed sheets. 8. collect all the gifts, t-shirts, and everything with their smell on it and drop it off at a donation center. 9. plan a trip. 10. perfect the art of smiling and nodding when someone brings their name up in conversation. 11. start a new project. 12. whatever you do. do not call. 13. do not beg for what does not want to stay. 14. stop crying at some point. 15. allow yourself to feel foolish for believing you could’ve built the rest of your life in someone else’s stomach. 16. breathe.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

To expect to be kissed having bad breath is the secret of a fool.

To get rejected so vehemently Over and over again Until some said it was the rejection I was after No it wasn't I wanted the intensity that you sometimes promised

To greet each day ossified; Like fossil remains forgotten beneath the feet of something more lively.

To go where no one else has ever gone before is the secret of heroism.

To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor

To Have Without Holding: Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch, to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can't do it, you say it's killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor's buttons blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced.

To him, she was like a flower that bloomed in the snow. Thriving under conditions in which nothing could grow. To some, she was a weed born benighted. But in his eyes, she was a wildflower with a soul ignited.

To have touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation. If a man writes well only when he's drunk, then I'll tell him: Get drunk. And if he says that it's bad for his liver, I'll answer: What's your liver? A dead thing that lives while you live, whereas the poems you write live without while.

To Helen I saw thee once-once only-years ago; I must not say how many-but not many. It was a july midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light Thier odorous souls in an ecstatic death- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted by thee, by the poetry of thy prescence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses And on thine own, upturn'd-alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate that, on this july midnight- Was it not Fate (whose name is also sorrow) That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footstep stirred; the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh Heaven- oh, God! How my heart beats in coupling those two worlds!) Save only thee and me. I paused- I looked- And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out; The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All- all expired save thee- save less than thou: Save only the divine light in thine eyes- Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them- they were the world to me. I saw but them- saw only them for hours- Saw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition!yet how deep- How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go- they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me- they lead me through the years. They are my ministers- yet I thier slave Thier office is to illumine and enkindle- My duty, to be saved by thier bright light, And purified in thier electric fire, And sanctified in thier Elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in heaven- the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still- two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

To — In vision I roamed the flashing Firmament, So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan, As though with awe at orbs of such ostént; And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky, To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome, Where stars the brightest here are lost to the eye: Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home! And the sick grief that you were far away Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near, Who might have been, set on some foreign Sphere, Less than a Want to me, as day by day I lived unware, uncaring all that lay Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.

To have been where you have been And to still have joy, Dazzling in your heart, Now there’s a thing to make the whole world smile.

To jump over centuries In one step is impossible. Jump too high or far, You’ll be way too late.

To learn by heart is to learn By hurt—grief inscribing Its wisdom in the soft tissue. Song you sing, poem you are— Finger moving, precise As a phonograph needle, Along the groove of scar.

to live a substance-free life under the pressures of the daily grind is state-sponsored suicide

To live day by day Is not to live at all.

To love thyself is the only option, I catch my reflection in the mirror; I caution myself But seeing your picture-perfect lives is a pollution - - your bliss disrupts my peace, bugging me to consider that my own existence isn’t burdened with glee. Just like a movie, I crave my life to be … … but only because I flick the screens and yours seems to be.

To live completely is a felt poetic.

To love is to soar in the wild unexpectedly.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

Tomorrow came with the illusion of today even more fleeting than yesterday it came like it always comes and went like it’s always gone like a favorite song in its final seconds Tomorrow came and left leaving nothing nothing... but a familiar lingering sense of loss behind.

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum. But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example,'The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance.' The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is shattered and she is not with me. This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. My sight searches for her as though to go to her. My heart looks for her, and she is not with me. The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same. I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing. Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before. Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes. I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her. Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her.

Tonight, I won't dream, because nobody has held me and no hands have strayed and even though I'm drunk with love, my arms are empty.

To not say all that can be said is the secret of discipline and economy.