I keep my kindness in my eyes Gently folded around my iris Like a velvety, brown blanket That warms my vision I keep my shyness in my hair Tucked away into a ponytail Looking for...

Onwetend van dit alles maakte ik eind vorige eeuw mijn entree in dit discours door aan een tijdschrift te vertellen dat poëzie volgens mij entertainment is. Als iemand dat platvloers vindt, voegde ik er behulpzaam...

Hands. Cheeks. Eyes. Lips.Neck. Ears.Thighs.Heart. Soul.Ahh!the things I get tosavor you with.

Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to...

I have wished you something None of the others would….

Lives of great men all remind usWe can make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind usFootprints on the sands of time;Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing, shall take heart...

The MercyThe ship that took my mother to Ellis Islandeighty-three years ago was named “The Mercy.”She remembers trying to eat a bananawithout first peeling it and seeing her first orangein the hands of a young...

In those days I used to talk to myself as if reciting poetry.

There are horrible events going on all over the world. Human beings are really fucking up. Poets, we can’t just write poems. We have to put poems into action.

They mutilate they torment each otherwith silences with wordsas if they had anotherlife to livethey do soas if they had forgottenthat their bodiesare inclined to deaththat the insides of men easily break downruthless with each...

Ignorance and virtue suck on the same straw…

From the mind which thinks to die, let my soul sleep tonight.

You just go on your nerve.

I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen, and so I swung into action and wrote a poem, and it was miserable, for that’s how I thought poetry worked: you digested experience and shat...

Come on up, boys-I’m dead.

We somehow must become what we are not, sacrificing what we are, to inherit the masquerade of what we will be.

One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read – in such a moment, anything can happen.

If you can’t beat em: Poem.

The summer in youcalms the winter in me.

Change the world so that nothing else is changed.

The rain to the wind said,You push and I’ll pelt.’They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged–though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.

Loving you is kissing the night, exposing the scars, words in flames, for every drop and for every life.

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

I have nothing to say And I am saying it And that is poetry

I almost gave my life long ago for a thingThat has gone to dust now, stinging my eyes—It is strange how often a heart must be brokenBefore the years can make it wise.

She was the unlucky lover,who loved everyone but herself

I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.

I’ll Die For Your Sins If You Live For mine.

But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the...

She didn’t do anything at allexcept arrived without warningin the middle of the night(right when I least expected it)She walked by me, with a strut in her stepsmelling like summercausing me to turn my head(even...

We sleep in language if language does not come to wake us up with its strangeness.

If there is passion, let me feel its heat.I want my heart to beat fast,my breath raspy, my skin to burn.

… unfools of unbeing … means quite clearly people who are too stereotyped to be eccentric – people who are too dead spiritually to exist at all and who call alive individual fools

Humanity is its own worst enemy. What chance do any other species have?Survival is the parchment upon which the Law of Nature is inscribed.And what I’ll find was always mine.And what I’ll say, I’ve said...

I have brushed my teeth.This day and I are even.

I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved; since I could not give gifts, I gave words.

So sweet and delicious do I become,when I am in bed with a manwho, I sense, loves and enjoys me,that the pleasure I bring excels all delight,so the knot of love, however tightit seemed before,...

Tis the witching hour of night,Orbed is the moon and bright,And the stars they glisten, glisten,Seeming with bright eyes to listenFor what they listen?

I’m going to Hell in a basketWeaved in from my sinsLike wickerWith little Wiccan tiesAs if I’m a witchAccused

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,...