Poetry

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

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

How shall I hold my soul, so that it does not touch on yours? How shall I lift it beyond you to other things? Ah, gladly would I house it with something

— Rainer Maria Rilke · Love Song

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

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

(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)

(translated by Annemarie S. Kidder) I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough to truly consecrate the hour.

— Rainer Maria Rilke · I Am Much Too Alone

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

since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you;

— e.e. cummings · [since feeling is first]

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

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

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

(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)

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

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

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting

— Mary Oliver · The Journey

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

— Maya Angelou · Still I Rise

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create

— Martha Postlethwaite · The Clearing

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