There is an Anglo-Saxon form of riddling that plays with the polarities of words like bright and dark, cold and warm, throwing them against one another and crafting lines of rich, humorous nonsense like this...

My mind: a thousand hungry daughters,my harlot heritage.Marbles: lost, no rescue search.Your heart: blooming thorns,and a stolen grocery cart.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps...

Don’t tell me you’re not beautiful. You’re the kind of beautiful the blind would see if we could figure out some way to give them three seconds of sight.

We, all who live, haveA life that is livedAnd another life that is thought,And the only life we haveIt’s the one that is dividedIn right or wrong.

Paradise is no whim.It takes time and trust,You see.

¡Los suspiros son aire y van al aire!¡Las lágrimas son agua y van al mar!Dime, mujer, cuando el amor se olvida,sabes tú adónde va?

Salty as a lip” is my favorite. It’s so alive: strange and human / earthy and raw. Mysterious but grounded. Mashak has manifested paradox, it seems. Bravo!

i bring my kiasu friend to the airportleavings are never easy, not for longand though we both saw blur along the waymemories flooded present tensions.in the curry of his life no lemak remainedso now the...

the bourgeoisie is sociopathic, overindulged, distracted, spoiled beyond measure, and unable to restrain its gluttony, even in the face of pending planetary destruction. In the face of such a threat, it has, by necessity, become...

Every time a poet is about to write, every time the open their mouth to say something, they express their inner world and tell of their own feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and opinions, unless they are...

Unless you call attentionto your presencewho will know you’re there?Even a countryhas to weave and wave a flagas proof of its existence.

I wasn’t reading poetry because my aim was to work my way through English Literature in Prose A–Z.But this was different.I read [in, Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot]: This is one moment, /...

When from our better selves we have too longBeen parted by the hurrying world, and droop,Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,How gracious, how benign, is Solitude

A BoyOut of the noise of tired people working,Harried with thoughts of war and lists of dead,His beauty met me like a fresh wind blowing,Clean boyish beauty and high-held head.Eyes that told secrets, lips that...

We write about love like we should be bound in padded rooms.

THOUGH you are in your shining days,Voices among the crowdAnd new friends busy with your praise,Be not unkind or proud,But think about old friends the most:Time’s bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor...

Im looking for a girl who’s fun to be around.

All poets are religious poets.

When there’s a moon the shadows in the house grow larger;invisible hands draw back the curtains,a pallid finger writes forgotten words on dustof the piano…

I nodded, trying to imagine the very particular sadness of a vanished childhood yogurt now found only in France. It was a very special sort of sadness, individual, and in its inability to induce sympathy,...

The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions....

I now know how your angercame from skeletonsthat rattled in your heartand you couldn’t escape them.

Lesson learned: If you’re already resorting to writing shitty poetry (not the lovey-dovey kind) to get your guys attention within one month of meeting him, he is not the one.

…make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.” Wendell Berry

To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.

Only the poet truly understands what is written between the pregnant pauses they create.

Beauty is truth; truth beauty.

I could burn this place downAs many times as I’d like in my mind,Without any sympathy For the girl or her motherWho live beneath me

I wish I’d known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of them—and come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was damn them,...

I heard of a manwho says words so beautifullythat if he only speaks their namewomen give themselves to him.If I am dumb beside your bodywhile silence blossoms like tumors on our lipsit is because I...

… and the most beautiful words ever spoken, I have not yet said to you.

…I would not engage the wombatIn any form of mortal combat.

I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I’m going to be immoderate–and volatile–I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.

Even when muddy your wings sparkle bright wonders that heal broken worlds.

On the edge of dreaming when the brain lets go, when it stops its scheming, our blood runs slow… Then the heart speaks clearly of the things it knows, things it brought so dearly at...

a joy that hurts with sadnessa sadness that is pleasurablea pleasure full of terrora terror that excitesan excitement that calmsa calmness that frightens.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Open the fridge and putMy heart on a plate.I’m just as you leftme, and I taste even betterleftover.

Only our love hath no decay; This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, Running it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed.

I opened my veins. Unstoppablylife spurts out with no remedy.Now I set out bowls and plates.Every bowl will be shallow.Every plate will be small.And overflowing their rims,into the black earth, to nourishthe rushes unstoppablywithout cure,...

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

Time slips by; our sorrows do not turn into poems,And what is invisible stays that way.

Poetry is a presentiment of the truth.

MotherHushed and sacred silencefills the dawning skyI ponder in this momentof our journey which is nigh…

The life spills over, some days.She cannot be at rest,Wishes she could explodeLike that red tree—The one that bursts into fireAll this week.Senses her infinite smallnessBut can’t seize it,Recognizes the folly of desire,The folly of...

Hay menos tiempo que lugar, no obstante, hay lugares que duran un minuto y para cierto tiempo no ha lugar.

Neither pathway is correct.

The Poet With His Face In His HandsYou want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn’t need anymore of that sound.So if you’re going to do it and...