Poetry Quotes

When admiring other people's gardens, don't forget to tend to your own flowers.

~ Sanober Khan

Don't shrink your standards, link yourself with those who think and ink like you.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

EdgesI am a child throwing rocks into the stream.Challenging the rushing water.Raising my fist and daring fate to do it worst.I am a dancer in the waves of the ocean.Swaying in time with the tide.Pirouetting, the current my only friend.I am the sun, rising across the canyonAscending, and shinning down.Giving the illusion of perception and motion.I am thoughts like a rolling river.Water cascading over the rocks of my soul.Shaping, forming, conforming.I am the peace of the rain forest.Basking in solitudeTranquil, serene, transfixing angles.Reflecting from within.Dripping and dropping. Shaking it off.I am the dust of the galaxy.Yearning to know itself.I am the wind.Wandering. Searching.A storm brewing from within.

~ Tosha Michelle

I want to look into a mirror that will love my own reflection harder than I hate myself.

~ Meggie Royer

Into my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?That is the land of lost content,I see it shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come

~ A.e. Housman

even in death, his last breath was poetryexisting in the wind and on the breeze ofit used to be likes forever remembering,yet never relivinghis lifewill never be what it used to be like.

~ N'zuri Za Austin

I wish I was what I have beenAnd what I was could beAs when I roved in shadows greenAnd loved my willow treeTo gaze upon the starry skyAnd higher fancies buildAnd make in solitary joyLoves temple in the field

~ John Clare

I live on in the sweetness of old dayswith strangers who build new dwellingson blue hills up to the edge of the sky,I talk softly with the captured treesand comfort them sometimes.How slowly time consumes the core of things,and soundlessly treads fate’s heavy heel.

~ Edith Södergran

When this, our rose, is faded,And these, our days, are done,In lands profoundly shadedFrom tempest and from sun:Ah, once more come together,Shall we forgive the past,And safe from worldly weatherPossess our souls at last?

~ Ernest Dowson

The past is uselessto me now:an old suitcasewith mould in the lining,heavy even when empty.

~ Robyn Sarah

There were days when I still put on make up in case you’d come back,but I wear the same clothes and shower in the rainand eat when I can and sleep when I can,which is rare and not often,so if you’d see me nowon these streetswhere I once imagined walking with youyou’d have a hard time recognising me.I takes a lot to run away.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

It could be yesterdaywhen I was less in loveI thinkFor I didn’t see you in the mirrorbehind mewhile getting dressed.The way your hands couldn’t stay awayand our bodies always found their ways back to each otheras if they were meant to be togetherClose.But then it was today and I saw you againin the mirrorbehind me while getting dressedSo I go to sleep tonightalonewithout actually falling asleep because I’m scared of the moment I will wake upand realise it was just a dreamYou’re actually gone.Now all I can do is get through to another tomorrowhoping that I will be less in loveagainLike yesterdayBut not today.I was never really well with things at all.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

On the far horizon waved some flicker of lightMy heart, a city of suffering, awoke in a state of dreamMy eyes, turning restless, still dreaming,the morning, dawning in this vacuous abode of separation.

~ Faiz Ahmed Faiz

And so beneath the weight lay IAnd suffered death, but could not die.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I measure every Grief I meetWith narrow, probing, eyes –I wonder if It weighs like Mine –Or has an Easier size.I wonder if They bore it long –Or did it just begin –I could not tell the Date of Mine –It feels so old a pain –I wonder if it hurts to live –And if They have to try –And whether – could They choose between –It would not be – to die –I note that Some – gone patient long –At length, renew their smile –An imitation of a LightThat has so little Oil –I wonder if when Years have piled –Some Thousands – on the Harm –That hurt them early – such a lapseCould give them any Balm.

~ Emily Dickinson

Though fervent was our vow,Though ruddily ran our pleasure,Bliss has fulfilled its measure,And sees its sentence now.Ache deep; but make no moans:Smile out; but stilly suffer:The paths of love are rougherThan thoroughfares of stones.

~ Thomas Hardy

I almost gave my life long ago for a thingThat has gone to dust now, stinging my eyes—It is strange how often a heart must be brokenBefore the years can make it wise.

~ Sara Teasdale

To suffer together is to suffer with beauty...

~ Kelli Russell Agodon

To toil, to think, to long, to grieve,—Is such my future fate?The morn was dreary, must the eveBe also desolate?

~ Charlotte Brontë

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,And has the nature of infinity.

~ William Wordsworth

it is being honest about my painthat makes me invincible.

~ Nayyirah Waheed

SOUL SHINEYou know that thingYou do so well,That little sparkYou hideIn the dark,That you thinkNobodyKnowsAboutButYou?Well,Did you knowThatThere'sA sheenThat you beam,When you talkOr doAnything,That everyoneKnowsAboutButYou?

~ Suzy Kassem

...but beautiful mosaics are made of broken pieces.

~ Lori Jenessa Nelson

All of my insecuritiesshine in the dark.

~ Lori Jenessa Nelson

to live asubstance-freelife under thepressures ofthe daily grindis state-sponsoredsuicide

~ Phil Volatile

I hate forcing myself to go to bed to avoid committing suicide.

~ Phil Volatile

THE DAY I ALMOST KILLED MYSELFIt was afternoon and the razorreflected the sky like like a mirror. The bath towelswere white like the bathtub and my wristswere white like the towels.The bathwater got lukewarm.The afternoon turned into lateafternoon and I was still pulling ropes of airinto my lungs like a sailor. The razor reflectedthe sunset. The bathwater got cold.The bath towels were white like the bathtub and my wrists were white like the towels.

~ Karen Finneyfrock

JASON: 'Intended wings.' How depressing.MICHAEL: Yes. Makes them into suicides, really, the pigeons.JASON: No - no, it doesn't. It could mean the wings were 'intended' to carry them upwards, out of the darkness, but they were defective in some way, these wings, so the pigeons aren't suicidal, not at all, just badly equipped for flying. Like the rest of us.

~ Simon Gray

Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such anguish and glee and throw them over the bridge, watching the smash, orange, as they hit below, We were standing underneath when you told it. People do that with themselves when they are finished, light scooped out. He landed here, you said, marking it with your foot.You wouldn't do it that way, empty, you wouldn't wait, you would jump with the light still in you.

~ Margaret Atwood

Okay, we didn’t work, and allmemories to tell you the truth aren’t good.But sometimes there were good times.Love was good. I loved your crooked sleepbeside me and never dreamed afraid.There should be stars for great warslike ours.

~ Sandra Cisneros

When my desiregrows too fierceI wear my bed clothesinside out,dark as the night’s rough husk.

~ Ono No Komachi

It is not given to each of usTo be desired.

~ Mina Loy

Without the wetness of your love,The fragrance of your water,Or the trickling sounds ofYour voice,I shall always feelthirsty.

~ Suzy Kassem

I want to have a romance so grand,it would have made Shakespeare fumble for words.

~ Sanober Khan

Saturated Arrogance...imprisoned musescried to be freeshe took away their quillsand saiddo not bother me...

~ Muse

Her half-closed eyes were moist and tremulous and languid with desire. I began to drink love from them with thirsty kisses, which revived her spirits a litle.

~ Apuleius

DICK’S DESIREDick's eyes-Soft, cold, and blue-Meet Devonshire's-Dark, sexy, and yearning.Turning away-Dick grabs two packets of sugar-While Devonshire's eyes-Are still upon him-Pondering his every move.Is Dick a playboy,A ladies' man,A mans' man,Or a killer?Does his sex long for,Something hard-Or something soft?Does he need cream in his coffee-The screaming splash of a man,Or the sweet flow of a woman?Finishing up at the bar-Dick turns to leave-Meets Devonshire's gaze again-Hot, thirsty, and longing-But full of trepidation.Following the flow of etiquette-Dick shoots out of the cafe,Past Devonshire,And into a world of dashed hopes,And regrets.But Devonshire-No longer of two worlds-Rises in pursuit-Goes after Dick,And taps him on the shoulder.Dick gives a turn,Raises his shoulders,And smiles with interest-Taking Devonshire's hand,And asking his name.Devonshire answers-Desire.Dick invites Devonshire to dinner,Where he eats everything,Swallowing Dick's life stories,And devouring his misgivings.For dessert,Devonshire takes Dick home,Into his bed,Against his flesh,And gives Dick all of him-His deepest desires,The love in his eyes,And the fire in his soul.

~ Giorge Leedy

False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu! Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.

~ Walter Raleigh

AttractionThe whites of his eyespull me like moons.He smiles. I believehis face. Alreadymy body slips down in the chair:I recline on my side,offering peeled grapes.I can taste his tonguein my mouthwhenever he speaks.I suspect he lies.But my body oils itself loose.When he gets up to fix a drinkmy legs like derrickshoist me off the seat.I am thirsty, it seams.Already I see the seductionfar off in the distancelike a large treedwarfed by a risein the road.I put away objectionsas quietly as quilts.Already I explain to myselfhow marriages are broken--accidentally, like arms or legs.

~ Enid Shomer

This was what the poets couldn't put in their poetry, she thought dumbly, the rush of desire so fierce and pure it made one shake, all on the force of a word.

~ Lauren Willig