Poetry

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

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 ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive.

— Billy Collins · Introduction To Poetry

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables Said if I could get down 13 turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted.

— Andrea Gibson · The Nutritionist

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

In the long journey out of the self, There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places Where the shale slides dangerously And the back wheels hang almost over the edge

— Theodore Roethke · Journey Into The Interior

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

— Mary Oliver · When I Am Among The Trees

*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 think…

— Andrea Gibson · Ashes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word\! Give back my book and take my kiss instead. Was it my enemy or my friend I heard, “What a big book for such a little head\!”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · Oh, oh, you will be sorry

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

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

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…