Poetry

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

Too much too little well not enough to fight too thin or nobody laughter or tears or immaculate haters lovers non-consumer an old guy in a cheap room

— Charles Bukowski · People Aren't Good (The Crunch)

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

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

I stopped looking for you I stopped waiting for you I stopped dying for you and I started dying for myself

— Leonard Cohen · I stopped looking for you

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

Who is Jeremy Ward July 22nd 1985 dear Hans vanbrook thank you for your letter

— Charles Bukowski · Letter to Hans van den Broek [Re. Censorship]

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

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)

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

(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 nigh…

— Pablo Neruda · Poesia (Poetry)

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

(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)

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

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

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

— Robert Frost · Stopping by Woods on a Snowy…

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

Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing?

— Mary Oliver · Lead

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going

— Charles Bukowski · Bluebird