If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were...

Enmerson’s interest is in the workshop phase, the birthing stage of art, not the museum moment, the embalming phase. Poetry mimics Creation and is therefore sacred. More precisely, just as God may indeed be a...

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

I wish to stay drenchedforeverin those rain-blue eyesin those…soul-reaching crystalsnot moving a musclenor breathingjustsavoringthis turquoise acheagainst my heart.

The muffled syllables that Nature speaksFill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

love wounds me with soft pillows with tender lips and fingers

So many things I had thought forgottenReturn to my mind with stranger pain:Like letters that arrive addressed to someoneWho left the house so many years ago.

For TrishaThe truth’s in myth not fact,a story fragment or an actthat lasts and stands for all:how bees made honey in a skull.

may my touchalways…be tenderas i would strokemother’s cheekswhen she cried.

The IdealThis is where I came from.I passed this way.This should not be shameful Or hard to say.A self is a self. It is not a screen. A person should respectWhat he has been. This...

Tis the wink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath,From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud-Oh! why should the spirit of...

…But…to sing,to dream, to smile, to walk, to be alone, be free,with a voice that stirs and an eye that still can see!To cock your hat to one side, when you pleaseat a yes, a...

even in the loneliest momentsi have been therefor myself.

High FlightOh! I have slipped the surly bonds of EarthAnd danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirthof sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of...

it is to be savored like a seabreeze-whispereddream…in the mysteriousblue minutesbefore dawnlike a secretinfatuation…. like slowlanguorous sipsof green tea… like a lingeringglimpsea self-wrappedparadiselike his name upon my lips.

He feeds upon her face by day and night,And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;Not as she...

Love does not claim materialistic possession of any kind, it yields complete freedom.

I have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up

My life is filled with buckets of tears; thousands of people shouting in my ears; the humming and chirping of hundreds of Himalayan birds, which are irresistible to hear.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over/Man by a scribbled name.

The touched heart madly stirs,your laughter is water hurrying over pebbles – every gesture is a proclamation,every sound is speech…

Tener opiniones es estar vendido a uno mismo. No tener opiniones es existir. Tener todas las opiniones es ser poeta.

For every moment of suffering,Others will arriveThat will instead pierce you with joy.

Chemistry has the same quickening and suggestive influence upon the algebraist as a visit to the Royal Academy, or the old masters may be supposed to have on a Browning or a Tennyson. Indeed it...

I do not blame himfor not knowing the gentleness of my soul.When I only showed him,how violently I loved.

When extremists come together extreme things happen.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

The edge of the sea masks a clock that marks the waves.

The world has never favored the experimental life. It despises poets, fanatics, prophets and lovers.

A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.

Love is the only bow on Life’s dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of...

I’m going to do something bigger and better,bigger and betterand bolder, but first,I’m going to do somethingsmaller and worse.

If words allow themselves to be handled, it is with the help of infinite carefulness. One has to welcome them, listen to the, before asking any service of them. Words are living things closely involved...

Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us.

Take you example by this thing,/ And yield to each his right,/ Lest God with such like miserye/ Your wicked minds requite

When Darkness surrounds you, look for the stars. When Jealousy whispers, kill it with laughter. When Hate hurts you, love with all your strength.

So much dependsupona blue carsplattered with mudspeeding down the road.

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.

I’ve been here before, dreaming myselfbackwards, among grappling hooks of light.True to the seasons, I’ve lived every wordspoken. Did I walk into someone’s nightmare?

…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.