Poem Quotes

Sure, we thought the acresThat we tilled were sacred,But how could we have knownThat wheat can haunt like ghosts

~ Sherman Alexie

Walk the midway and hear the carnival barker.Come see the freak named after his deceased father.Come see the prince who wants to abdicate his throne.Come see the son whose name is carved on a gravestone.

~ Sherman Alexie

A short poem from my book:PerspectiveOf coursethere is a hellshe saidand it hasan observation deck,so I maystand and waveto all those kindsouls belowwho warned meI would go there.

~ Michelle Hartman

Scarring smiles, hidden tears,You stand, heads bowed and revereThe soul before us, burnt and tornHer faded essence, we sadly mournAnd though she walked a path of liesHer spirit surely still shall riseAnd among her own, she can be at peace An eternal angel, she’s been released.

~ Amelia Mysko

Another day without no rain, is another day of sorrow.And if it doesn't rain today, I hope it rains tomorrow.

~ J.m. Carydice

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!

~ Leslie Austin

My heart is lost, the beasts have eaten it.

~ Charles Baudelaire

And you know what the worst thing was?The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.

~ Jack Mccarthy

Not all that have fallen are vanquished.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

Better off dead than giving in, not taking what you want.

~ Carol Ann Duffy

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.

~ William Carlos Williams

Holding up an oil-paper umbrella,I loiter aimlessly in the long, longAnd lonely rainy alley,I hope to encounterA lilac-like girlNursing her resentmentA lilac-like color she hasA lilac-like fragrance,A lilac-like sadness,Melancholy in the rain,Sorrowful and uncertain;She loiters aimlessly in this lonely rainy alleyHolding up an oil-paper umbrellaJust like meAnd just like meWalks silently,Apathetic, sad and disconsolateSilently she moves closerMoves closer and castsA sigh-like glanceShe glides byLike a dreamHazy and confused like a dreamAs in a dream she glides pastLike a lilac spray,This girl glides past beside me;She silently moves away, moves awayUp to the broken-down bamboo fence,To the end of the rainy alley.In the rains sad song,Her color vanishesHer fragrance diffuses,Even herSigh-like glance,Lilac-like discontentVanish.Holding up an oil-paper umbrella, aloneAimlessly walking in the long, longAnd lonely rainy alley,I wish forA lilac-like girlNursing her resentment glide by.

~ Dai Wangshu

...feel the fierce way desiretourniquets itself around you andclingsClubland South of Market tweak-chic trannies powder their noses frombullet-shaped compacts and flick their forkedtongues like switchblades as they burn the nightdown bleed day to night to day toMission sidewalks where pythons hidetwenty dollar balloons beneath their tongues whichget bartered in smiles quicker than a coke buzz andtossed out through the cracksCottonmouth kissescamouflage emotions andstrike with a vengeancewhen hewants and shewants and theywant and Iwon'tGenet was right, I supposewhen he wrote The only wayto avoid the horror of horror isto give in to itit'sthe nature ofthe economy of thebusiness it's thenature ofthings...

~ Clint Catalyst

Shine and shimmer my Harvest Moon,illuminate the shadows in the sky.

~ A.f. Stewart

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me will full hands; How could I answer the child?......I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. There was the hope Dr. Holden had talked about-the grass was a metaphor for his hope. But thats not all. He continues, Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped, Like grass is a metaphor for God's greatness or something.... And then soon after is itself a child.... And then soon after that, Or, I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broadzones and narrow zones. Growing among black folk as among white.

~ John Green

Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled.

~ Siegfried Sassoon

from time to time, i think of him watching mefrom over the top of his glasses, or eating candyfrom a jar. i remember thanking him each timethe session was done. but mostly what i seeis a human hand reaching down to lifta pebble from my tongue

~ Tracy K. Smith

Love leads us to write poetry because love improves our hearing; like prayer, poetry is every bit as much about listening as it is about speaking. To 'get' the poem is to hear the eloquence of the silence that it calls forth through its manifestation of love.

~ David Patterson

Caleb dumped me on my birthday,Before I’d ordered an entrée,“What a dick!” some might say!But don’t you worry my little sheep,I am not sad and will not weep,For Caleb Jones is a cheat!He two-timed me with some ho,Whose name is Kacey ‘Slut’ Munroe!But I don’t care about my foe,For I have found a brand new guy,My Blue Eyed, Mr Berry Pie!And I know, he won’t make me cry,For I did fall under his spell,To him, I am his gorgeous Belle,So Caleb Jones can go to Hell!

~ Joanne Mcclean

When daylight is here i dream of the night,The stars of a country sky that shine so bright.A night sky without clouds, for the moon to hide under,Revealing every twinkle and every beam, of the Milky Way's wonder.I grow sad in the morning, And i pay the day no mind.Every time i see the light coming, I know the sunset's not far behind.

~ J.m. Pierce

Welcome to thee,O sword of eternity!Through BuddhaAnd through Daruma alikeThou hast cleft thy way.

~ Kakuzō Okakura

Secure in his flightRider on the constant windsHawk flies through his daysLooks then to the eastPrompted by fate’s gentle breezeChanges his intentFate’s gentle breezesMove the mighty heart to changeDestiny remade

~ Steve Robison

I could go on all night, Lake. I could go on and on and on about all the reasons I’m in love with you. And you know what? Some of them are the things that life has thrown our way. I do love you because you’re the only other person I know who understands my situation. I do love you because both of us know what it’s like to lose your mom and your dad. I do love you because you’re raising your little brother, just like I am. I love you because of what you went through with your mother.I love you because of what we went through with your mother. I love the way you love Kel. I love the way you love Caulder. And I love the way I love Kel. So I’m not about to apologize for loving all these things about you, no matter the reasons or the circumstances behind them. And no, I don’t need days, or weeks, or months to think about why I love you. It’s an easy answer for me. I love you because of you. Because of every single thing about you.

~ Colleen Hoover

No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love- be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love -cannot be bitter, cannot deny,cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy

~ Allen Ginsberg

That's what I love about poetry. The more abstract, the better. The stuff where you're not sure what the poet's talking about. You may have an idea, but you can't be sure. Not a hundred percent. Each word, specifically chosen, could have a million different meanings.

~ Jay Asher

Laws of physicslaws of loveof time and spaceand the (in)between place(in)between you and meand where we arelost and lookinglooking and lost

~ Kami Garcia

Answers I kept my answers small and kept them near;Big questions bruised my mind but still I letSmall answers be a bullwark to my fear.The huge abstractions I kept from the light;Small things I handled and caressed and loved.I let the stars assume the whole of night.But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacityShouted to be acknowledged and believed.Even when all small answers build up toProtection of my spirit, still I hearBig answers striving for their overthrow.And all the great conclusions coming near

~ Edith Sitwell

I know you can't wash in the same river even onceI know the river will bring new lights that you will not seeI know we live slightly longer than a horse and not nearly as long as a crowI know this has troubled people before and will trouble those after meI know all this has been said a thousand times before and will be said after meI didn't know I like the sky cloudy or clearthe blue vault that Andrei watched on his back on the battlefield at Borodino...

~ Nâzım Hikmet

There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out.

~ Charles Bukowski

All day long you sit and sew,Stitch life down for fear it grow,Stitch life down for fear we guessAt the hidden ugliness.Dusty voice that throbs with heat,Hoping with your steel-thin beatTo put stitches in my mind,Make it tidy, make it kind,You shall not: I'll keep it freeThough you turn earth, sky and seaTo a patchwork quilt to keepYour mind snug and warm in sleep!

~ Edith Sitwell

The fusty showman fumbles, must Fit in a particle of dustThe universe, for fear it gainIts freedom from my cube of brain.Yet dust bears seeds that grow to graceBehind my crude-striped wooden faceAs I, a puppet tinsel-pinkLeap on my springs, learn how to think—Till like the trembling golden stalkOf some long-petalled star, I walkThrough the dark heavens, and the dewFalls on my eyes and sense thrills through.

~ Edith Sitwell

The children walk away from me, flick flickety off at a tangent between thin blotched beech trunks, then turn like yo-yos at the end of their strings and come back to me from the poem In a BishopsWood Clearing

~ Jay Woodman

I listened long to your story,Listened but could not hear.When you chose to walk that path so overgrown,I remained alone with my fear.Cold silence covers the distance,Stretches from shore to shore.I follow in my mind your far-off journeying,But I will walk that path no more.

~ Anne Elisabeth Stengl

-A Word On Statistics-Out of every hundred people, those who always know better:fifty-two.Unsure of every step:almost all the rest. Ready to help,if it doesn't take long:forty-nine. Always good,because they cannot be otherwise:fourwell, maybe five. Able to admire without envy:eighteen. Led to errorby youth (which passes):sixty, plus or minus. Those not to be messed with:four-and-forty. Living in constant fearof someone or something:seventy-seven. Capable of happiness:twenty-some-odd at most. Harmless alone,turning savage in crowds:more than half, for sure. Cruelwhen forced by circumstances:it's better not to know,not even approximately. Wise in hindsight:not many morethan wise in foresight. Getting nothing out of life except things:thirty(though I would like to be wrong). Balled up in painand without a flashlight in the dark:eighty-three, sooner or later. Those who are just:quite a few, thirty-five. But if it takes effort to understand:three. Worthy of empathy:ninety-nine. Mortal:one hundred out of one hundreda figure that has never varied yet.

~ Wisława Szymborska

Most things may never happen: this one will.

~ Philip Larkin

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.

~ Rita Dove

I’ve seen daggers pierce the chest,Children dying in the road,Crawling things hooked and baited,Rapists bound and then castrated,Villains singed in public square.Yet none these sights did make me cringeLike when my Love cut all her hair.

~ Roman Payne

Up the still, glistening beaches,Up the creeks we will hie,Over banks of bright seaweedThe ebb-tide leaves dry.We will gaze, from the sand-hills,At the white, sleeping town;At the church on the hill-side—And then come back down.Singing: There dwells a loved one,But cruel is she!She left lonely for everThe kings of the sea.(from poem 'The Forsaken Merman')

~ Matthew Arnold

I just sit where I'm put, composedof stone and wishful thinking:that the deity who kills for pleasurewill also heal,that in the midst of your nightmare,the final one, a kind lionwill come with bandages in her mouthand the soft body of a woman,and lick you clean of fever, and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neckand caress you into darkness and paradise.

~ Louise Penny

The Wolf trots to and fro,The world lies deep in snow,The raven from the birch tree flies,But nowhere a hare, nowhere a roe,The roe -she is so dear, so sweet -If such a thing I might surpriseIn my embrace, my teeth would meet,What else is there beneath the skies?The lovely creature I would so treasure,And feast myself deep on her tender thigh,I would drink of her red blood full measure,Then howl till the night went by.Even a hare I would not despise;Sweet enough its warm flesh in the night.Is everything to be deniedThat could make life a little bright?The hair on my brush is getting grey.The sight is failing from my eyes.Years ago my dear mate died.And now I trot and dream of a roe.I trot and dream of a hare.I hear the wind of midnight howl.I cool with the snow my burning jowl,And on to the devil my wretched soul I bear.

~ Hermann Hesse