Poetry

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

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

Nice chance completely cut loose from purpose he was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere

— Charles Bukowski · Nirvana

You know i've either had a family a job something has always been in the way but now i've sold my house

— Charles Bukowski · Creativity

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

This door you might not open, and you did; So enter now, and see for what slight thing You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · Bluebeard

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

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · Dirge Without Music

Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling,

— Carl Sandburg · Chicago

Do not love half lovers Do not entertain half friends Do not indulge in works of the half talented Do not live half a life and do not die a half death

— Kahlil Gibran · Do Not Love Half Lovers

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

Now I am out of element And far from anything my own, My sources drained of all content, The pieces of my spirit strewn.

— Theodore Roethke · Against Disaster

AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado, The confession I made I resume— what I said to you in the open air I resume: I know I am restless, and make others so;

— Walt Whitman · Epitaph for a Friend

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

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

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

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

— Charles Bukowski · Letter to John Martin

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

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