Poetry Quotes

You can't quell depression by making love. But we tried. But we tried, oh, we did.

~ Yrsa Daley-Ward

Once more, my harp! once more, although I thoughtNever to wake thy silent strings again,A wandering dream thy gentle chords have wrought,And my sad heart, which long hath dwelt in pain,Soars, like a wild bird from a cypress bough,Into the poet's Heaven, and leaves dull grief below

~ Caroline Norton

They were wrong about the sun.It does not go down into the underworld at night.The sun leaves merelyand the underworld emerges.It can happen at any moment.It can happen in the morning,you in the kitchen going throughyour mild routines.Plate, cup, knife.All at once there’s no blue, no green,no warning.

~ Margaret Atwood

What we have now, shall never be again. The poets of the past sit in amazement of the wanna-be's of an era long gone.

~ T. Grassan

Bells ringing with no soundLaughter with no voiceHappiness lost without being foundMaking love with no noise

~ T. Grassan

Play a Death March for me

~ T. Grassan

Harrowing The plow has savaged this sweet field Misshapen clods of earth kicked up Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view Last year’s growth demolished by the blade. I have plowed my life this way Turned over a whole history Looking for the roots of what went wrong Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scared. Enough. The job is done. Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be Seedbed for the growing that’s to come I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons— The farmer plows to plant a greening season.

~ Parker J. Palmer

It’s voyeuristic the way you searchfor answers in these cries for help,and how you see Death’s fingersbut always think they’re paintbrushes.

~ Miriam Joy

I felt happier yesterday. I do not feel happy today – I feelabandoned and godless and brokenin a church built for the damnedwith artificial light through stained glassand warped wooden doors.

~ Miriam Joy

Maybe tranquility is the dirt under my nails. I know it's there but I never feel like digging it out.

~ Casey Renee Kiser

The monsters were neverunder my bed.Because the monsterswere inside my head.I fear no monsters,for no monsters I see.Because all this timethe monster has been me.

~ Nikita Gill

I remember a scared, young girl hiding in the guise of arrogance and rebellion. I remember feeling lost in a world where everyone else seemed to have it all figured out. I remember the tears of pain, the rants of anger and the hell that seemed to have swallowed me whole. Although I remember these things, it is now, over a decade later, more like a story that I find hard to believe. Did it all really happen? Even as I write this, my eyes begin to swell. It really did happen. I was that girl. And I’m sorry she had to suffer so. But, that is over now...

~ Karen Michelle Miller

When you told me I didn't love youI simply thought how would you knowFor I remembered the spaces between your fingersAnd the crease between your eyesHow dare you tell meI never thought of you as mine.

~ Sara Jones

This is the hour I hide everythingBehind my eyesTo see if you can seeAll the trouble my brain's been brewing. Yes, I feel I am the worst and you are the bestAnd yet, and yet, Nothing bad unfolds as we sit,Young and nervous, Alive and bursting,With futures that may not entwine.Who am I?Who am I to sabotage what may be too smallFor even chaos to noticeAnd disassemble?

~ Evan Roskos

We're in the business of melancholiaand we are married to our work.

~ Casey Renee Kiser

Discouragement, fear, and depression—three villains who lurk in the dark.They slip inside souls with a blindfold and goals to shatter your dreams and extinguish your spark.Their tactics are highly effective.They crush a great many each day.And under their spell it is easy to dwellOn fiascoes and failures that end in dismay.The heart and the mind are left heavy.The last speck of will is erased.And nothing stays on when these villains are gonebut a mouthful of bile with the bitterest taste.Alas! You must conquer the scoundrels!Elude, dodge, and keep them at bay!To feel fear slink in, boring under your skin,is a sign that his brothers are well on their way.So reach for your weapons against them!Take hope and hard work in each hand!Strap faith on your hips and a prayer on your lipsand show those debasers how firmly you stand!Discouragement, fear and depression—the truth should be known of these cads.They’re empty and weak; it is your strength they seek.Deny them and life is your wish in the bag.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The core of your true self is never lost. Let go of all the pretending and the becoming you've done just to belong.Curl up with your rawness and come home. You don't have to find yourself, you just have to let yourself in.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

I want to celebrate the sadness that makes you feel everything so deeply. I want to throw a party for the wounds that make you so unabashedly human.

~ D. Antoinette Foy

love meget lost in mebut bewareside effects includea lot of shivering, babya lot of drinking, maybea lot of sinking, baby

~ Casey Renee Kiser

I want to sleep in the ovenbecause I just burn in the bed.

~ Casey Renee Kiser

Oh, precious losing streak,you're too cute for your own good. I try to laugh about itbut my face is made of wood.

~ Casey Renee Kiser

No Child of YoursI saw a child hide in the cornerSo I went and asked her nameShe was so naive and so petiteWith such a tiny frame. 'No one,' she replied, that's what I am calledI have no family, no one at allI eat, I sleep, I get depressedThere is no life, I have nothing left.''Why hide in the corner?' I had to ask twiceBecause I've been hurt, it not very niceI tried to stop it, it was out of my controlI feared for myself I wanted to go. I begged for my sorrow to disappearI turned in my bed, oh God, I knew they were near'So come on little girl, where do you goA path ahead, or a path to unknown?'With that she arose, her head hung lowShe held herself for only she knowsHer tears held back, her heart like iceIt looks as though she has paid the price.The ice started melting, her tears to flowThe memories flood back, still so many years to goThe pain, the anger all built up insideNowhere to run, nowhere to hide.It will get better, just wait and seeYou'll get a life, though you'll never be fireOpen your heart and love yourselfThe abuse you suffered was NOT your fault.

~ Teresa Cooper

I primarily use poetry as a purge, a self-medication device when I’m in the depths of loneliness, anxiety or in the throes of depression. When I’m lost in the darkness of mental illness, I spill forth a deluge of words and prose that are oftentimes grim, dark and depressive. And when my poems are spilled forth into one of my poetry journals, I feel a weight has been indeed been lifted from me, and my mind can rest just a bit easier.

~ Nicholas Trandahl

It...whatever 'it' is, has swallowed me and I lie here in the pit of its cold dark stomach being eaten alive by its bile and I...I don't even know if I want to be saved.

~ Kellie Elmore

I'm falling apart, one part after another. Falling down on the world like snow. Half of me is already on the ground, watching from below.

~ Ashly Lorenzana

While pensive poets painful vigils keep,Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

~ Alexander Pope

Pain, too, comes from depths that cannot be revealed. We do not know whether those depths are in ourselves or elsewhere, in a graveyard, in a scarcely dug grave, only recently inhabited by withered flesh. This truth, which is banal enough, unravels time and the face, holds up a mirror to me in which I cannot see myself without being overcome by a profound sadness that undermines one's whole being. The mirror has become the route through which my body reaches that state, in which it is crushed into the ground, digs a temporary grave, and allows itself to be drawn by the living roots that swarm beneath the stones. It is flattened beneath the weight of that immense sadness which few people have the privilege of knowing. So I avoid mirrors.

~ Tahar Ben Jelloun

The red washingdown the bathtubcan't change the color of the seaat all.

~ Derrick Brown

To those who have been accustomed to the difficulties and dangers of a sea-faring life, there are no lines which speak more forcibly to the imagination, or prove the beauty and power of the Greek poet, than those in the noble prayer of Ajax:Lord of earth and air,O king! O father! hear my humble prayer.Dispel this cloud, that light of heaven restore;Give me to see - and Ajax asks no more,If Greece must perish - we Thy will obey;But let us perish in the face of day!

~ Frederick Marryat

Where were you when I undressed and told the tales of my day?Where were youwhenI was silent with God in prandial pray?Where were youwhen I recited love poems as I lay?Where were you?

~ Kamand Kojouri

Scatter as a prayerescaping my lips...as orchidsblooming in clouds.

~ Sanober Khan

I sat in a boxWith walls on each side.Not too tall.Not too wide.To think.To ponder.To pray.To hide.I sat in a box and cried.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

You only have to do one good thing to be in somebody’s lifetime of prayers.

~ Sanober Khan

I know we sort of said goodbye, but I don’t have anyone else to tell this to and I’m going to burst with it. You know EBB’s verse: God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed For in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in it. –

~ Mary Jane Hathaway

Solace of Silencesurreal synapsesof a melancholy dronea dream per chanceshe dared not be alone...

~ Muse

My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations, were witnessed by myself and heaven alone. When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry—and often find it, too—whether in the effusions of others, which seem to harmonize with our existing case, or in our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical, perchance, but more appropriate, and therefore more penetrating and sympathetic, and, for the time, more soothing, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart.

~ Anne Brontë

Prayer is a many fingeredand kaleidoscopic thing—it foldsand unfolds inside of you. It entersthe many rooms you cannot enter.

~ Cecilia Llompart

I beg you, help me, in angelic charity,Pray my efforts will reflect your mastery!

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

A Strange Prayer:Dear Lord, I, the self searching illusion, has seen and experienced the outer world:relationships,success and failure,true friends, strangers and backbiters.I lived the different emotionsduring different seasons;I witnessed ups & downs,enjoyed love & hate,was good & bad,faced beauty & ugliness.There were times when I was brave,there were times when I was a coward.There were times when I was proactive,there were times when I was indecisive.After, flying high in the skies,and yet being a loser...After, being nothing & no one,and yet feeling content..I have understood the differencebetween lust and love,happiness and sadness,selfishness and selflessness.One often leads to another;another secretly carries the one!Yet I am lostbetween being and becoming.An inner voice admits thatmy heart is an unexplored realm,my mind is a prisoner to my wishful thinking,and the soul is unknown to me.Setting that unknown free... now, this is my heartiest wish.As Saurabh Sharma,the human being,Ialwayspray to thee, O lord, set me free.I don't want love,I don't want to be loved;I want myself to be love itself now.That beautiful, silent and divine existence...!I want to get merged into that.Please give me wisdom and courage; Merge me into your supreme kingdom by setting my soul free.

~ Saurabh Sharma

...all my life I prayed to a star – Later discovered it was Venus – I was praying to Aphrodite and wondering why she was sending me you -sad...

~ John Geddes