Poetry
If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. If you’re going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe even your mind.
— Charles Bukowski · Go All The Way
The Guitar The weeping of the guitar begins. The goblets of dawn are smashed. The weeping of the guitar begins. Useless to silence it. Impossible to silence it. It weeps monotonously as water weeps as the wind weeps over snowfields. Impossible to silence it. It weeps for distant…
— Federico Garcia Lorca · La Guitarra (The Guitar)
my love, don't let your skin become so thick that
— John Roedel · My Love
(translated by Robert Bly) I can tell by the way the trees beat, after so many dull days, on my worried window panes that a storm is coming,
— Rainer Maria Rilke · The Man Watching
But there are times the pupils of his eyes Dilate, the strong limbs stand alert, apart, Tense with the flood of visions that arise Only to sink and die within his heart.
— Rainer Maria Rilke · The Panther
you shall above all things be glad and young For if you’re young,whatever life you wear it will become you;and if you are glad whatever’s living will yourself become.
— e.e. cummings · [you shall above all things be glad]
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
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
*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
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
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
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
— W.E. Henley · Invictus
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
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
Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing?
— Mary Oliver · Lead
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
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
Who is Jeremy Ward? August 12th, 1986. Hello, John. Thanks for the good letter. I
— Charles Bukowski · Letter to John Martin
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…
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
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