All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“Our love was bornoutside the walls,in the wind,in the night,in the earth,and that’s why the clay and the flower,the mud and the rootsknow your name.”

“I’ll say I love you,Which will lead, of course,to disappointment,but those words unsaidpoison every next moment.I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.”

“For you she learned to wear a short black slipand red lipstick,how to order a glass of red wineand finish it. She learned to reach outas if to touch your arm and then nottouch it, changing the subject.Didn’t you think, she’d begin, orWeren’t you sorry. . . .To call your best friendsby their schoolboy namesand give them kisses good-bye,to look away when they sayYour wife! So your confidence grows.She doesn’t ask what you wantbecause she knows.Isn’t that what you think?When actually she was only waitingto be told Take off your dress—to be stunned, and then do this,never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious:in one motion up, over, and gone,the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,her face flashing away from you in the fabricso that you couldn’t say if she wasappearing or disappearing.”

“What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.”

“I used to think love was two people suckingon the same straw to see whose thirst was stronger,but then I whiffed the crushed walnuts of your nape,traced jackals in the snow-covered tombstones of your teeth.I used to think love was a non-stop saxophone soloin the lungs, till I hung with you like a pair of sneakersfrom a phone line, and you promised to always smellthe rose in my kerosene. I used to think love was terminalpelvic ballet, till you let me jog beside while you pedaledall over hell on the menstrual bicycle, your tongueripping through my prairie like a tornado of paper cuts.I used to think love was an old man smashing a mirrorover his knee, till you helped me carry the barbellof my spirit back up the stairs after my car pirouettedin the desert. You are my history book. I used to not believein fairy tales till I played the dunce in sheep’s clothingand felt how perfectly your foot fit in the glass slipperof my ass. But then duty wrapped its phone cordaround my ankle and yanked me across the continent.And now there are three thousand miles between the uand s in esophagus. And being without you is like standingat a cement-filled wall with a roll of Yugoslavian nickelsand making a wish. Some days I miss you so muchI’d jump off the roof of your office buildingjust to catch a glimpse of you on the way down. I wishwe could trade left eyeballs, so we could always seewhat the other sees. But you’re here, I’m there,and we have only words, a nightly phone call – one chanceto mix feelings into syllables and pour into the receiver,hope they don’t disassemble in that calculus of wire.And lately – with this whole war thing – the language machinesupporting it – I feel betrayed by the alphabet, like they’reinjecting strychnine into my vowels, infecting my consonants,naming attack helicopters after shattered Indian tribes:Apache, Blackhawk; and West Bank colonizers are settlers,so Sharon is Davey Crockett, and Arafat: Geronimo,and it’s the Wild West all over again. And I imagine Picassolooking in a mirror, decorating his face in war paint,washing his brushes in venom. And I think of Jeninin all that rubble, and I feel like a Cyclops with two eyes,like an anorexic with three mouths, like a scuba diverin quicksand, like a shark with plastic vampire teeth,like I’m the executioner’s fingernail trying to reasonwith the hand. And I don’t know how to speak lovewhen the heart is a busted cup filling with spit and paste,and the only sexual fantasy I have is bustinginto the Pentagon with a bazooka-sized pen and blowingopen the minds of generals. And I comfort myselfwith the thought that we’ll name our first child Jenin,and her middle name will be Terezin, and we’ll teach herhow to glow in the dark, and how to swallow firecrackers,and to never neglect the first straw; because no oneever talks about the first straw, it’s always the last strawthat gets all the attention, but by then it’s way too late.”

“Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;Behind the clouds is the sun still shining”

“A Photographer’s PoemTo take a photograph is to learn new stepsLike a toddler’s first walk from start to endVisualize a dream, a paradigm, a themeIt could be about anywhere, anyone, any moment or anythingLet that sink in until your eyes see clearlyWhat image you cease to create to preserve in dearlyWith a camera you take the picture in mindA photographer’s mistake is to leave it behindTake it wherever a journey is to take placeThere will always be something that comes across your ways”

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering – these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love – these are what we stay alive for.”

“No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down–impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.”

“Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.”

“We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.”

“Under the greenwood tree,Who loves to lie with meAnd tune his merry note,Unto the sweet bird’s throat;Come hither, come hither, come hither.Here shall he seeNo enemyBut winter and rough weather.”

“Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them…”

“If it ain’t a pleasure, it ain’t a poem.”