Each word, as someone once wrote, contains the universe.The visible carries all the invisible on its back. Tonight, in the unconditional, what moves in the long-limbed grasses, what touches me As though I didn’t exist?...

Some poems are written great, some poems are written swell. But then there are poems that could win a prize in Hell.

Teaching others, he corrected himself.

කඳු ශිඛරයකිරාත්‍රිය

I dreamed I spoke in another’s language,I dreamed I lived in another’s skin,I dreamed I was my own beloved,I dreamed I was a tiger’s kin.I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,And when I breathed a...

Because,” said a boy.”Because why?” asked a young girl.”Because I love you.

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn’t identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you’re the one that bleeds.

The paradox of a woman, as a thin line separates the beauty from the uglythe beauty charms, so does the ugliness in its own ways that are myriad.The piousness will not shout about its nicety,...

Humanity i love you because youare perpetually putting the secret oflife in your pants and forgettingit’s there and sitting downon itand because you areforever making poems in the lapof death Humanityi hate you

Some thirty inches from my noseThe frontier of my Person goes,And all the untilled air betweenIs private pagus or demesne.Stranger, unless with bedroom eyesI beckon you to fraternize,Beware of rudely crossing it:I have no gun,...

I love a sunburnt country,A land of sweeping plains,Of ragged mountain ranges,Of droughts and flooding rains.I love her far horizons,I love her jewel-sea,Her beauty and her terror –The wide brown land for me!

Here is a story that’s stranger than strange. Before we begin you may want to arrange:a blanket, a cushion, a comfortable seat,and maybe some cocoa and something to eat.I’ll warn you, of course, before we...

Poets sing our human music for us.

To hear her name I truly yearn,My heart is crying out;The sense of love I wish to earn,Without a second doubt.

It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.

I can’t shake you.

During our first date,I wanted to hold your hand so badI almost cut mine offand threw it at youto see if you would catch it

It was not in me It came and wentI wanted to hold it It was held by wine(I no longer know what it was)

That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them

There will never be an endTo this droning of the surf.

I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me...

The campus, an academy of trees,under which some hand, the wind’s I guess,had scattered the pale lightof thousands of spring beauties,petals stained with pink veins;secret, blooming for themselves.We sat among them.Your long fingers, thin body,and...

You must make love to him like his touch is your salvation.

Auguries of innocence”The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mileMake lame philosophy to smile.He who doubts from what he seesWill ne’er believe, do what you please.

Music is not my life. My life is music.

I can no longer trust in this loveIt has fallen like the saints aboveAll because of your sweet liesYou sang them like a lullaby”Phoenix

The German Censors —— —— —— —— ———— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ———— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ———— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ————...

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I don’t wish to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone.

If poetry dies, nothing lives !

Ho! Ho! Ho! To the bottle I goTo heal my heart and drown my woeRain may fall, and wind may blowAnd many miles be still to goBut under a tall tree will I lieAnd let...

It is at the edge of the petal that love waits

Heavy as such things areAfter the wordslide, the writing begins.”From “Word Quake

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me;Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths allBolted against me.Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers,Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,I’m called, if vanquished,...

I live not in myself, but I becomePortion of that around me: and to meHigh mountains are a feeling, but the humof human cities torture.

Stasis in darkness.Then the substanceless blue

Cultivate the distance. Nurture the silence. Let it grow until your fragile heart is as far and inaccessible as his marbled emotions. Don’t talk. Don’t move. Sit still. If he shows up, lie. Believe your...

Al final del camino me dirán:—,Has vivido? ,Has amado?Y yo, sin decir nada,abriré el corazón lleno de nombres.

Poetry is the essence and evidence of life.

He who does not know how to encircle a girl so that she loses sight of everything he does not want her to see, he who does not know how to poetize himself into a...

Nothing fills the world quite as poetry does. A poet need not dwell on the pagecount of his life.

Me too thy nobleness has taughtTo master my despair;The fountains of my hidden lifeAre through thy friendship fair.

Our Mother feedeth thus our little life, That we may in turn feed her with our death

Demander à la poésie du sentimentalisme … ce n’est pas ça. Des mots rayonnants, des mots de lumière … avec un rythme et une musique, voilà ce que c’est, la poésie.

I didn’t know till then the stars, in flakesof snow come down to fuck the earth, the lake.

A friend is a companion for the journey,never a means to our own.What we take we take together,the joy we reap, we have sown.

If I ever see an alien fishing in Scotland, and witness it catching the Loch Ness Monster, I’d probably assume the world would want me to write a poem about the event, rather than take...

I walked a mile with Pleasure;She chatted all the way;But left me none the wiserFor all she had to say.I walked a mile with Sorrow;And ne’er a word said she;But, oh! The things I learned...

Hearing a crow with no mouthCry in the deepDarkness of the night,I feel a longing forMy father before he was born.

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier...