All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“Resolve, and thou art free.”

“The day I bought my cane, I realizedI was through with the burden of feet. Instead,I am going to become a mermaid. I have always liked the ocean, the promise of depth. I am tired of this dry world,all of this dust and sickness, these barren fields.I want to dive without drowning. I want to kiss sharks.I want men to carve me into the bows of their ships like a prayer, before I lure them into the depths with my fishnet mouth. I want the beauty, the gorgeous mutation, the fairytale of half body. All the wisdom of a woman, without the failures of sex. I am plunging. I am not coming up for air.I do not want all this human,my legs move like they resent being legs, my body is wrecked by all this gravity.I cannot face another morning waking upwith no hope of a fairytale. Here on land, I am always drowning. Here on land,I cannot move.”

“I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow”

“I’m at that place I grew up to leave.”

“We wear the mask that grins and lies,It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—This debt we pay to human guile;With torn and bleeding hearts we smile”

“A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.”

“I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end, not a suspension: the senses wouldn’t protect me. I caution you as I was never cautioned: you will never let go, you will never be satiated.You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger. Your body will age, you will continue to need. You will want the earth, then more of the earth–Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond. It is encompassing, it will not minister. Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you, it will not keep you alive.”

“A poet’s mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.”

“In fact she herself once blamed meKyprogeneiabecause I prayed this word:I want.”

“Two Kinds of PeopleThere are two kinds of people on earth today,Two kinds of people no more I say.Not the good or the bad, for it’s well understood,The good are half bad, the bad are half good.Not the happy or sad, for in the swift-flying years,Bring each man his laughter, each man his tears.Not the rich or the poor, for to count a man’s wealth,You must know the state of his conscience and health.Not the humble and proud, for in life’s busy span,Who puts on vain airs is not counted a man.No! the two kinds of people on earth I mean,Are the people who lift, the people who lean.Wherever you go you’ll find the world’s massesAre ever divided into these two classes.And, strangely enough, you will find, too, I mean,There is only one lifter to twenty who lean.In which class are you? Are you easing the loadOf the overtaxed lifters who toiled down the road?Or are you a leaner who lets others bear,Your portion of worry and labor and care?”

“If you are a monster, stand up.If you are a monster, a trickster, a fiend,If you’ve built a steam-powered wishing machineIf you have a secret, a dark past, a scheme,If you kidnap maidens or dabble in dreamsCome stand by me.If you have been broken, stand up.If you have been broken, abandoned, aloneIf you have been starving, a creature of boneIf you live in a tower, a dungeon, a throneIf you weep for wanting, to be held, to be known,Come stand by me.If you are a savage, stand up.If you are a witch, a dark queen, a black knight,If you are a mummer, a pixie, a sprite,If you are a pirate, a tomcat, a wright,If you swear by the moon and you fight the hard fight,Come stand by me. If you are a devil, stand up.If you are a villain, a madman, a beast,If you are a strowler, a prowler, a priest,If you are a dragon come sit at our feast,For we all have stripes, and we all have horns, We all have scales, tails, manes, claws and thornsAnd here in the dark is where new worlds are born.Come stand by me.”

“The Good-MorrowI wonder by my troth, what thou, and IDid, till we lov’d? Were we not wean’d till then?But suck’d on countrey pleasures, childishly?Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?T’was so; But this, all pleasures fancies bee.If ever any beauty I did see,Which I desir’d, and got, ’twas but a dreame of thee.And now good morrow to our waking soules,Which watch not one another out of feare;For love, all love of other sights controules,And makes one little roome, an every where.Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne,Let us possesse one world; each hath one, and is one.My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,Where can we finde two better hemisphearesWithout sharpe North, without declining West?What ever dyes, was not mixed equally;If our two loves be one, or, thou and ILove so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.”

“The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.”

“He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chestwhere a heart would fit perfectlyand he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place –well then, game over.”

“Stars open among the lilies.Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?This is the silence of astounded souls.”