Poetry

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

and squander the power of the noblest gift, only to make men worse, more skeptical, and sadder? Is this your sacred calling as prophets and as artists?… Where are our enthusiasts, our dreamers, our troubadours, to sing us the meaning of the world and the splendors of nature?

— Alexandru Vlahuță · Where Are Our Dreamers

I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year Ere I forget, or die, or move away,

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · I shall forget you presently

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · What Lips My Lips Have Kissed

I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane.

— Robert Frost · Acquainted with the Night

(I Ask For Silence) Translated by Heidi Fischbach Now if you’d leave me in peace. Now if you’d get on without me. I am going to close my eyes And I only want five things, five favorite roots. The first is love without end. The second is to see autumn. I cannot be without leaves f…

— Pablo Neruda · Pido Silencio (I Ask For Silence)

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

— Charles Bukowski · Letter to John Martin

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title. It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now so immediately the poem has my attention, like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.

— Billy Collins · Workshop

It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette someone left burning on a baby grand piano around three o’clock in the morning; smoke that billows up into the bright lights

— Billy Collins · Nightclub

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror

— Derek Walcott · Love After Love

There is enough treachery hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day and the best of murder of

— Charles Bukowski · The Genius of the Crowd

Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance, Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of foot And not to be trapped by withering laurels. And in you I have found aloneness And the joy of being shunned and scorned.

— Kahlil Gibran · Defeat

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

Foreign Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of Five Sisters Cass was The Most Beautiful Girl In Town

— Charles Bukowski · The Most Beautiful Woman in Town

(Keeping Quiet) Translated by Stephen Mitchell Now we will all count to twelve and we will all keep still. This one time upon the earth, let’s not speak any language, let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be a delicious moment, without hurry, without…

— Pablo Neruda · A Callarse (Keeping Quiet)

Who is Jeremy Lord? There are degrees of madness. And the matter you are, the more obvious it will be to other

— Charles Bukowski · My Madness

Rhyme XI —I am ardent, I am dark-skinned, I am the symbol of passion, my soul is filled with longing for pleasures. Are you looking for me? —No, it’s not you. —My forehead is pale, my tresses golden: I can offer you endless joys, I hold a treasure of tenderness. Are you calling…

— Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer · Rima XI (Rhyme XI)

Bring the Symphony Orchestra there is a thunderstorm you're playing a Wagner overture and the people leave their seats under the trees and run inside to

— Charles Bukowski · Rain

Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm\! – The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil;

— Theodore Roethke · Long Live The Weeds

When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;

— William Shakespeare · Sonnet 12: When I Do Count

call-to-action duende love sovereignty transition vulnerability

74 poems

Poet	Poem	Written	First line	Added	Tags
Pablo Neruda	A Callarse (Keeping Quiet)	1958	(Keeping Quiet) Translated by Stephen Mitchell Now we will all count to twelve and we will all keep still. This one time upon the earth, let’s not speak any language, let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be a delicious moment, without hurry, without locomotives, all of us would be together in a sudden uneasiness. The fisherman in the cold sea would do no harm to the whales and the peasant gathering salt would look at his torn hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars of gas, wars of fire, victories without survivors, would put on clean clothing and would walk alongside their brothers in the shade, without doing a thing. What I want shouldn’t be confused with final inactivity: life alone is what matters, I want nothing to do with death. If we weren’t unanimous about keeping our lives so much in motion, if we could perhaps do nothing for once, perhaps a great silence would interrupt this sadness, this never understanding ourselves and threatening ourselves with death, perhaps the earth is teaching us when everything seems to be dead and everything is alive. Now I will count to twelve and you keep quiet and I’ll go.	Apr-23
Andrea Gibson	A Letter To The Playground Bully, From Andrea, Age 8 ½	2011	maybe there are cartwheels in your mouth	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	A Smile to Remember		we had goldfish and they circled around and around	Jun-15
Robert Frost	Acquainted with the Night	1928	I have been one acquainted with the night.	Apr-23
Theodore Roethke	Against Disaster	1938	Now I am out of element	Apr-23
Rainer Maria Rilke	Archaic Torso of Apollo	1908	We cannot fathom his mysterious head,	Jun-20
Andrea Gibson	Ashes	2009	A couple years ago, I was told a story about a soldier who was set on fire and burned to death because he was gay. After that, I started reading similar stories about people in the GLBTQ community who were tortured or killed by being set on fire and burned. I couldn’t stop thinking about the people who had died that way and couldn’t stop wondering what they might say from where they are now.	Apr-23
Rainer Maria Rilke	Autumn Day	1902	Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.	Jun-20
Andrea Gibson	Birthday	2009	At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon	Apr-23
Edna St. Vincent Millay	Bluebeard	1917	This door you might not open, and you did;	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	Bluebird	1992	there's a bluebird in my heart that	Apr-23
Carl Sandburg	Chicago	1914	Hog Butcher for the World,	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	Creativity		You know	Jun-15
Pablo Neruda	Deber Del Poeta (Poet's Obligation)	1962	(Poet’s Obligation) [https://youtu.be/aJ8yTw2v434?si=Td99WllijelN66gf\&t=51](https://youtu.be/aJ8yTw2v434?si=Td99WllijelN66gf&t=51) Translated by Alastair Reid To whoever is not listening to the seathis Friday morning, to whoever is cooped upin house or office, factory or womanor street or mine or harsh prison cell;to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,I arrive and open the door of his prison,and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,a great fragment of thunder sets in motionthe rumble of the planet and the foam,the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.So, drawn on by my destiny,I ceaselessly must listen to and keepthe sea's lamenting in my awareness,I must feel the crash of the hard waterand gather it up in a perpetual cupso that, wherever those in prison may be,wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation,I may be there with an errant wave,I may move, passing through windows,and hearing me, eyes will glance upwardsaying "How can I reach the sea?"And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,the starry echoes of the wave,a breaking up of foam and quicksand,a rustling of salt withdrawing,the grey cry of the sea-birds on the coast.So, through me, freedom and the seawill make their answer to the shuttered heart.	Apr-23
Kahlil Gibran	Defeat	1918	Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;	Apr-23
Edna St. Vincent Millay	Dirge Without Music	1928	I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.	Apr-23
Kahlil Gibran	Do Not Love Half Lovers		Do not love half lovers	Aug-4	call-to-action duende love sovereignty
Theodore Roethke	Epidermal Macabre	1941	Indelicate is he who loathes	Apr-23
Walt Whitman	Epitaph for a Friend	1865	AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,	Jul-12	duende
Robert Frost	Fire and Ice	1920	Some say the world will end in fire,	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	Go All The Way	1991	If you’re going to try, go all the way.	Apr-23
Rainer Maria Rilke	I Am Much Too Alone	1899	(translated by Annemarie S. Kidder)	Apr-23
Edna St. Vincent Millay	I shall forget you presently	1920	I shall forget you presently, my dear,	Apr-23
Leonard Cohen	I stopped looking for you		I stopped looking for you	Jul-9	duende love transition vulnerability
Rudyard Kipling	If	1910	If you can keep your head when all about you	Apr-23
Theodore Roethke	In a Dark Time	1960	In a dark time, the eye begins to see,	Apr-23
Billy Collins	Introduction To Poetry	1988	I ask them to take a poem	Apr-23
W.E. Henley	Invictus	1875	Out of the night that covers me,	Apr-23
Theodore Roethke	Journey Into The Interior	1962	In the long journey out of the self,	Apr-23
Naomi Shihab Nye	Kindness	1980	Before you know what kindness really is	Apr-23
Federico Garcia Lorca	La Guitarra (The Guitar)	1921	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 distantthings.Hot southern sandsyearning for white camellias.Weeps arrow without targetevening without morningand the first dead birdon the branch.Oh, guitar\!Heart mortally woundedby five swords.	Apr-23
Mary Oliver	Lead	2005	Here is a story	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	Letter to Hans van den Broek [Re. Censorship]		Who is Jeremy	Jun-15
Charles Bukowski	Letter to John Martin		Who is Jeremy	Jun-15
Theodore Roethke	Long Live The Weeds	1936	Long live the weeds that overwhelm	Apr-23
Derek Walcott	Love After Love	1976	The time will come	Apr-23
Rainer Maria Rilke	Love Song	1907	How shall I hold my soul, so that	Jun-20
John Roedel	My Love	2021	my love,	Oct-10
Charles Bukowski	My Madness		Who is Jeremy	Jun-15
Billy Collins	Nightclub	1995	You are so beautiful and I am a fool	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	Nirvana		Nice chance completely cut loose from	Jun-15
Edna St. Vincent Millay	Oh, oh, you will be sorry	1923	Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word\!	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	People Aren't Good (The Crunch)		Too much too little well not enough to	Jun-15
Pablo Neruda	Pido Silencio (I Ask For Silence)	1958	(I Ask For Silence) Translated by Heidi Fischbach Now if you’d leave me in peace. Now if you’d get on without me. I am going to close my eyes And I only want five things, five favorite roots. The first is love without end. The second is to see autumn. I cannot be without leaves flying away and returning to earth. Third is grave winter, the rain I loved, the caress of a fire in a wilderness of cold. In fourth place is summertime round like a watermelon. The fifth thing is your eyes, Matilde, my love, my beloved, I don’t want to sleep without your eyes, I don’t want to be without you seeing me: I’d trade springtime for your gaze still upon me. My friends, all of that is what I want. It’s nearly nothing and almost everything. And now if you wish you may leave. So much have I lived that one day you’ll have to make yourselves forget me, erasing the blackboard of me: my heart was endless. But just because I ask for silence don’t go thinking I’m about to die: au contraire\!: it so happens I am going to be lived. It just so happens that I am and I keep being. I will not be dying for within me grains will grow, first the kernels that break through the ground to see light, but mother earth is dark: and inside me I am dark: I am like a well in whose waters the nighttime leaves her stars and goes on alone through the fields. This is about my having lived so much that I want to live another much. Never have I felt such resonance, never have I had so many kisses. Now, as always, it is early. The light takes flight with her bees. Leave me alone with this day. I ask permission to be born.	Apr-23
Pablo Neruda	Poesia (Poetry)	1964	(Poetry) And 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 were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me. I did not know what to say, my mouth had no way with names, my eyes were blind, and something started in my soul, fever or forgotten wings, and I made my own way, deciphering that fire, and I wrote the first faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing, and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open, planets, palpitating plantations, shadow perforated, riddled with arrows, fire and flowers, the winding night, the universe. And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	Rain		Bring the Symphony Orchestra there is a	Jun-15
Edna St. Vincent Millay	Renascence	1912	All I could see from where I stood	Apr-23
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer	Rima XI (Rhyme XI)	1868	Rhyme XI —I am ardent, I am dark-skinned, I am the symbol of passion, my soul is filled with longing for pleasures. Are you looking for me? —No, it’s not you. —My forehead is pale, my tresses golden: I can offer you endless joys, I hold a treasure of tenderness. Are you calling me? —No, it’s not you. —I am a dream, an impossibility, a fleeting phantom of mist and light; I am incorporeal, intangible: I cannot love you. —Oh, come, come then\!	Apr-23
William Butler Yeats	Sailing To Byzantium	1926	I	Apr-23
Walt Whitman	Song Of The Open Road	1856	1	Apr-23
William Shakespeare	Sonnet 12: When I Do Count	1609	When I do count the clock that tells the time,	Apr-23
Maya Angelou	Still I Rise	1978	You may write me down in history	Apr-23
Robert Frost	Stopping by Woods on a Snowy…	1923	Whose woods these are I think I know.	Apr-23
Martha Postlethwaite	The Clearing		Do not try to save	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	The Genius of the Crowd		There is enough treachery hatred	Jun-15
T.S. Eliot	The Hollow Men	1925	Mistah Kurtz-he dead	Apr-23
Mary Oliver	The Journey	1986	One day you finally knew	Apr-23
William Butler Yeats	The Lake Isle of Innisfree	1888	I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,	Apr-23
Rainer Maria Rilke	The Man Watching	1901	(translated by Robert Bly)	Apr-23
Charles Bukowski	The Most Beautiful Woman in Town		Foreign	Jun-15
Andrea Gibson	The Nutritionist	2011	The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables	Apr-23
Rainer Maria Rilke	The Panther	1902	His weary glance, from passing by the bars,	Jun-20
Charles Bukowski	The Strange		Foreign	Jun-15
Theodore Roethke	The Waking	1953	I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.	Apr-23
Stephen Crane	The Wayfarer	1899	The wayfarer,	Apr-23
Antonio Machado	The Wind, One Brilliant Day	1912	The wind, one brilliant day, called	Apr-23
Edna St. Vincent Millay	Thursday	1920	And if I loved you Wednesday,	Apr-23
Edna St. Vincent Millay	What Lips My Lips Have Kissed	1920	What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,	Apr-23
Mary Oliver	When I Am Among The Trees	2006	When I am among the trees,	Apr-23
Alexandru Vlahuță	Where Are Our Dreamers	1892	I do not know — it is the melancholy of the dying century,	Jun-8
Mary Oliver	Wild Geese	1986	You do not have to be good.	Apr-23
Billy Collins	Workshop	1995	I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.	Apr-23
e.e. cummings	[since feeling is first]	1926	since feeling is first	Apr-23
e.e. cummings	[you shall above all things be glad]	1931	you shall above all things be glad and young	Apr-23