I primarily use poetry as a purge, a self-medication device when I’m in the depths of loneliness, anxiety or in the throes of depression. When I’m lost in the darkness of mental illness, I spill...

O, let my books be then the eloquenceAnd dumb presagers of my speaking breast;Who plead for love, and look for recompense,More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.O, learn to read what silent love...

The future says:Dear mortals;I know you are busy with your colourful lives;I have no wish to waste the little time that remainsOn arguments and heated debates;But before I can appearPlease, close your eyes, sit stillAnd...

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The...

And this is when I knew I was black for real.This is when I knew black was a citywhose walls were constantly under siege….

Maybe if I could slip into Sylvia’s mind, sort out the spices in her rack, alphabetize them and dust them off. Maybe then I’d understand how it’s the little things that pull you under.

I am no longer a writer. Just an emotion. An emotion that is unable to stay within its own body, and is therefore, trying to make its way into yours.

Many CastlesOn My Travels i have been A guest in Many castles Yet the Monument Which i Find Divine Is the oasis Where the heart And the silence Intertwine.

permission” to be creative and to be a creator too.

Old age doth in sharp pains abound;We are belabored by the gout,Our blindness is a dark profound,Our deafness each one laughs about.Then reason’s light with falling rayDoth but a trembling flicker cast.Honor to age, ye...

Language has not the power to speak what love inditesThe soul lies buried in the Ink that writes

One ventures, commits one’s self, and if readers are not pleased, one can perhaps please one’s self and earn that slender right to persevere.

i found god in myselfand i loved heri loved her fiercely

Dear friend, I have searched all nightthrough each burnt paper,but I fear I will never findthe formula to let you die

because two bodies, naked and entwined,leap over time, they are invulnerable,nothing can touch them, they return to the source,there is no you, no I, no tomorrow,no yesterday, no names, the truth of twoin a single...

Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,the dreamed as well as the lived—what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?

If you heard your lover scream in the next roomand you ran in and saw his pinkie on the floor, in a small puddle of blood.You wouldn’t rush to the pinkie and say, ‘Darling, are...

The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind enough to...

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.

Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word, so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States.

I say every dog looks like no otherbut that isn’t true. Not entirely.Difference is slippery.

The piano is kind of like a dance floor for our thoughts you know? A very woody foundation so that we can really focus on the poetry.

Language signifies when instead of copying thought it lets itself be taken apart and put together again by thought. Language bears the sense of thought as a footprint signifies the movement and effort of a...

And at the closing of the dayShe loosed the chain, and down she lay;The broad stream bore her far away,The Lady of Shallot.

That is what love does, it upstages fear.

We don’t know how to say goodbye,We wander on, shoulder to shoulderAlready the sun is going downYou’re moody, and I am your shadow.Let’s step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the deadWhy are we...

Out of love,No regrets–Though the goodnessBe wasted forever.Out of love,No regrets–Though the returnBe never.

why be bothered with other people’s set-ups? it only leads to torture.

Wer ein Theater füllen will, bedient sich der Dramaturgie. Um es zu leeren genügt Ideologie.

Note the lessons a broken heart has taught you but don’t ever alter the love you can give. Don’t let a broken heart hinder your kind of love.

We all wear masksto veil the truth.Truth is nakedness.Truth is fear.Truth is the gardener making you sit on his lapasking you tolight his cigarette.Truth is father— with a limp cigarette on his lips —telling you...

The whispers inside the red wheelbarrow’s dew.

I Go Down To The ShoreI go down to the shore in the morningand depending on the hour the wavesare rolling in or moving out,and I say, oh, I am miserable,what shall—what should I do?...

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that...

Why should I have been surprised?Hunters walk the forestwithout a sound.The hunter, strapped to his rifle,the fox on his feet of silk,the serpent on his empire of muscles—all move in a stillness,hungry, careful, intent.Just as...

love meget lost in mebut bewareside effects includea lot of shivering, babya lot of drinking, maybea lot of sinking, baby

Where music thundered let the mind be still,Where the will triumphed let there be no will,What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.

Oh, what is brighter than the light?What is darker than the night?What is keener than an axe?What is softer than melting wax?Truth is brighter than the light,Falsehood darker than the night.Revenge is keener than an...

Bridge burned from end to end,and I don’t miss you anymore.You delivered silenceI’ve birthed freedom.

We can hear your voiceWe can hear it through the songs of praiseWe can hear it through the birdsWe can hear it through the windWe can hear your voice in our heartsWe can hear your...

I feel like shredded paper thrown to the wind, each poet took a piece of me and wrote a word or phrase…

POETRY HAS A PEPTIC PRESENCE. PRESENTLY.

Listen, real poetry doesn’t say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.

Some women marry houses.

Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.

Venus TransiensTell me, Was Venus more beautiful Than you are, When she topped The crinkled waves, Drifting shoreward On her plaited shell? Was Botticelli’s vision Fairer than mine; And were the painted rosebuds He tossed...

…Thought lengths it, pulls an invisible world through a needle’s eye one detail at a time, …

once ruffle-skirted vanity table where I primped at thirteen, opening drawers to a private chaos of eyeshadows lavender teal sky-blue, swarms of hair pins pony tail fasteners, stashes of powders, colonies of tiny lipsticks (p.39)

Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.

Love life, Live Love