Poetry

We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

— Theodore Roethke · The Waking

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.

— Robert Frost · Fire and Ice

like the day I wrote the lightening bug to say, I smashed my mason jar and I threw away the lid. I didn't want to take a chance that I'd grow up to be a war. I want to be a belly dance or an accordion or a pogo stick

— Andrea Gibson · A Letter To The Playground Bully, From Andrea, Age 8 ½

What’s madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire\! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

— Theodore Roethke · In a Dark Time

Who is Jeremy Ward? August 12th, 1986. Hello, John. Thanks for the good letter. I

— Charles Bukowski · Letter to John Martin

The Guitar The weeping of the guitarbegins.The goblets of dawnare smashed.The weeping of the guitarbegins.Uselessto silence it.Impossibleto silence it.It weeps monotonouslyas water weepsas the wind weepsover snowfields.Impossibleto silence it.It weeps for distant…

— Federico Garcia Lorca · La Guitarra (The Guitar)

The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine. "In return for the odor of my jasmine, I'd like all the odor of your roses."

— Antonio Machado · The Wind, One Brilliant Day

And if I loved you Wednesday, Well, what is that to you? I do not love you Thursday— So much is true.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · Thursday

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;

— Rudyard Kipling · If

But there are times the pupils of his eyes Dilate, the strong limbs stand alert, apart, Tense with the flood of visions that arise Only to sink and die within his heart.

— Rainer Maria Rilke · The Panther

few good books and other works and from the best of the strange ones perhaps nothing they are their own paintings their own books their own music their own work sometimes I think I see them say a certain old man sitting on a certain bench in a certain way for a quick face going t…

— Charles Bukowski · The Strange

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body

— Mary Oliver · Wild Geese

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. If you’re going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe even your mind.

— Charles Bukowski · Go All The Way

Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. I inhale great draughts of space; The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.

— Walt Whitman · Song Of The Open Road

Indelicate is he who loathes The aspect of his fleshy clothes,— The flying fabric stitched on bone, The vesture of his skeleton,

— Theodore Roethke · Epidermal Macabre

you shall above all things be glad and young For if you’re young,whatever life you wear it will become you;and if you are glad whatever’s living will yourself become.

— e.e. cummings · [you shall above all things be glad]

I That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song,

— William Butler Yeats · Sailing To Byzantium

we had goldfish and they circled around and around in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes covering the picture window and my mother, always smiling, wanting us all

— Charles Bukowski · A Smile to Remember

Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much, the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood. We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday.

— Andrea Gibson · Birthday