Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe,Sooner than I will live with you.Fish will come walking out of the sea,Sooner than you will come back to me.

Picnic, LightningIt is possible to be struck by a meteoror a single-engine planewhile reading in a chair at home.Safes drop from rooftopsand flatten the odd pedestrianmostly within the panels of the comics,but still, we know...

Determined, I riseand face the dawn with resolve.This time I will win.

He thought others were small; that was his greatness.

There’s two ways to become a famous Poet, find that one person that knows somebody, that knows somebody, that knows somebody.Or die trying

A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.

If there has been one overriding change in poetic practice, it is that under the influence of free verse the poets have made a primary virtue out of exactitude and economy of meaning: this has...

My emotions have already spilled out on a canvas; I need you my king, to rescue me from the madness!

JASON: ‘Intended wings.’ How depressing.MICHAEL: Yes. Makes them into suicides, really, the pigeons.JASON: No – no, it doesn’t. It could mean the wings were ‘intended’ to carry them upwards, out of the darkness, but they...

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

Have you ever wondered What happens to all the poems people write?The poems they neverlet anyone else read?Perhaps they are Too private and personalPerhaps they are just not good enough.Perhaps the prospect of such a...

i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

A.E.Housman’No one, not even Cambridge was to blame(Blame if you like the human situation):Heart-injured in North London, he becameThe Latin Scholar of his generation.Deliberately he chose the dry-as-dust,Kept tears like dirty postcards in a drawer;Food...

Pity me that the heart is slow to learnWhat the swift mind beholds at every turn.

part memory part distance remainingmine in the ways that I learn to miss you

Harold’s Bow and FoodBowl bowl bowl bowlFood food food foodThe miracle of the heavenly restaurantI mouth thisgreat dark sad eveningSuddenly they come for me in a limousineHow could I have believed I was vanquishedI never...

When the shadows shroud the woods,And the mountains are empty and bare;I am flying with the crow…

McGough: I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve caught poetry. Mr Bones: Oh really? Well, don’t worry, sir – I used to suffer from short stories.McGough: Really? When?Mr Bones: Oh, once upon a time …

Irish improves a poet.

He hoped and feared,’ continued Solon, in a low. mournful voice; ‘but at times he was very miserable, because he did not think it possible that so much happiness was reserved for him as the...

After the final no there comes a yes / And on that yes the future world depends.

But I was youngand didn’t know betterand someone should have told me to capture every secondevery kiss & every nightBecause now I’m sitting here alone and it’s getting really hard to breath because tears are...

A billion stars go spinning through the night, / glittering above your head, / But in you is the presence that will be / when all the stars are dead.

Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others.

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough

For you was I born, for you do I have life, for you will I die, for you am I now dying.

How do god fit him ass in them jeans when he is, in fact, Everywhere

Les enfants qui s’aiment s’embrassent deboutContre les portes de la nuitEt les passants qui passent les désignent du doigtMais les enfants qui s’aimentNe sont là pour personneEt c’est seulement leur ombreQui tremble dans la nuitExcitant...

He taught me to be a Da Vinci and I sit here, with his portraits waiting for him to returnI do not think he willIs that what it means to be humanto be all powerful,...

Anger is easier than forgiveness.

Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn’d love; But now I think there is no unreturn’d love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a...

O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence; liveIn pulses stirred to generosity,In deeds of daring rectitude…

Whenever I learn a new word, I feel strong, for I discover a new world. Whenever I share a word, I feel weak: I give away a sparkle of my dreams. (Soar)

Fare well we call to hearth and hallThough wind may blow and rain may fallWe must away ere break of dayOver the wood and mountain tallTo Rivendell where Elves yet dwellIn glades beneath the misty...

If it ain’t a pleasure, it ain’t a poem.

You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary,Let not our naive labours have been in vain!

[The Old Astronomer to His Pupil]Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;He may know the law of all things,...

for the nightHath been to me a more familiar faceThan that of man, and in her starry shadeOf dim and solitary lovelinessI learned the language of another world.

Well, one wearies of the Public Gardens: one wants a vacationWhere trees and clouds and animals pay no notice;Away from the labeled elms, the tame tea-roses

Poets and intellectuals…are the ones the tyrants go after first.

One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent.

It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends

When true love broke my heart in half,I took the whiskey from the shelf,And told my neighbors when to laugh.I keep a dog, and bark myself.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide,...

…Feel no fear before the multitude of men, do not run in panic,but let each man bear his shield straight toward the fore-fighters,regarding his own life as hateful and holding the dark spirits of death...

PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATHConventions bleed my soulsqueeze me oldwear me grey like a headstone in transit.It’s tradition and form—fear of the unknown—driving me deadin tight spaces darkly.I cry aloudbut who can...

You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.

My name used to be in the papers dailyAs having dined somewhere,Or traveled somewhere,Or rented a house in Paris,Where I entertained the nobility.I was forever eating or traveling,Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.Now I am...

Some people spend their whole lives seeking heaven, when all they needed to do was look about them, and embrace that which was already there.

For what is a dream if not love first felt and what is mystery if not life itself