One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand

At first first nothing will happen to usand later on it will happen to us again.

On LivingLiving is no laughing matter:You must take it seriously.So much so and to such a degreethat, for example, your hands tiedbehind your back,your back to the wallor else in a laboratoryin your white coat...

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay.

The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace.

He will one day meet his true love… A fellow traveler on the road… Her eyes will be his ocean… In her ocean he will sail forever….

It is not growing like a treeIn bulk, doth make Man better be;Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:A lily of a dayIs fairer far...

How shall we distinguish that whichis good in pleasure from that which is not good?”Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is thepleasure of the bee to gather honey...

A litany of headlights blinding her, she stands unsteady on the dotted traffic line, takes timid steps toward rolled up windows behind which any horror could crouch….

At the round earth’s imagined corners blowYour trumpets, angels, and arise, ariseFrom death, you numberless infinitiesOf souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,All whom war, dea[r]th,...

I remainMistress of mine own self and mine own soul

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.

As the future ripens in the past,so the past rots in the future –a terrible festival of dead leaves.

There is no happiness like mine.I have been eating poetry.

It’s just me throwing myself at you,romance as usual, us times us,not lust but moxibustion,a substance burning closeto the body as possiblewithout risk of immolation.

White IrisThe iris danced acrossthe ancient Grecian skiesgliding with her embossedsatiny milken sides …

The appropriation of the creativity-procreativity metaphor by women is a conscious challenge to traditional poetics and beyond that to traditional metaphysics, for the gynocentric vision is not that Logos condescends to incarnate itself, but that...

Nos enseñaron desde niñoscómo se forma un cuerposus órganos sus huesossus funciones sus sitiospero nunca supimosde qué estaba hecha el alma

Good poetry does not exist merely for the sake of itself, but rather, is a byproduct of yearning and growth; great poetry canonizes that yearning for the growth of others.

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

Laser technology has fulfilled our people’s ancient dream of a blade so fine that the person it cuts remains standing and alive until he moves and cleaves. Until we move, none of us can be...

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming...

I offer you my mouth—Let me marry my lips to the tops of your thighs,I kneel between your legs. I offer you my hands—Your name written all over my palms,the fingers I press against you.I...

in der Fußgängerzone kam Wind auf wie immer Wind aufkommt bei der Suche nach jenem richtigen Ort der sich stets weit entfernt zeigt, die Abfallpapiere am Boden verrutschten, mein Mantel flatterte, und, als wäre dies...

I’m falling apart, one part after another. Falling down on the world like snow. Half of me is already on the ground, watching from below.

Poetry isn’t like any writing I’ve ever heard before. I don’t understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind.

—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!

Music gives inspiration…one that sounds windy with humming sound, such can put you in a trance, only to come back and discover some witty ideas.

WORDS SHLD BE FREE. RELEASE THEM FROM THEIR SENTENCES.

We can sum up the surrealist distinction between ‘literature’ and ‘poetry’ by saying where the former is artificial, fictive and elusive, the latter is natural, real, direct and spontaneous.

Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.

We are not from here, my dear. So:Let the flames take over our bodies,‘cause I wanna merely burn with you.And we can dance until we become ashes,but don’t you dare leave me when we become...

A black cat among roses,phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon,the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still.It is dazed with moonlight,contented with perfume…

Living is the opposite of poetry. Poetry is the recollection of living, or, more often than not, the lament of having not lived. Or worse yet, merely the contemplation of living. My advice to you,...

I don’t feel strong anymoreI feel like falling to my knees.Things aren’t the way they were before,They’re not the way they’re supposed to be.

I see a bird carrying me and carrying you, with us as its wings, beyond the dream, to a journey that has no end and no beginning, no purpose and no goal. I do not...

He said, ‘I can’t teach someone how to write,’ … He just thought if you were a poet, you wrote poetry.

PoetryAnd it was at that age… Poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don’t know how or when, no, they...

the next time you hear someone in a workshop remarking on how good a particular free-verse line or passage sounds, scan it. The odds are that it will fall into a regular metrical pattern.

My tongue remembers your wounded flavor.The vein in my neckadores you. A swordstands up between my hips,my hidden fleece sends forth its scent of human oil.

Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.

To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,The proper study of mankind is Man.Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,With too...

Poetry should only occupy the idle.

Poetry is Life. We experience poetry from the time we awake each morning and inhale that fresh breath of air. You are living poetry. Poetry is not defined by the laws of man. Inspiration is...

nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look–my feet don’t hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think...

Almost none of the poetries I admire stick to their labels, native or adopted ones. Rather, they are vagrant in their identifications. Tramp poets, there you go, a new label for those with unstable allegiances.

…you disappoint me -I am the worst liar in the world – I can’t hide my pain or my need so I make a bouquet of my sorrows and give them to you …

Come boy, and pour for me a cupOf old Falernian. Fill it upWith wine, strong, sparkling, bright, and clear;Our host decrees no water here.Let dullards drink the Nymph’s pale brew,The sluggish thin their blood with...