Quotes Tagged "poetry"

Prison Moon Four a.m. work duty and I begin my solitary trudge from outer compound to main building. A shivering guard, chilled in his lonely outpost, strip searches me until content that my inconsequential nudity. poses no threat and then whispers the secret code that allows me admittance into the open quarter-mile walkway. I chuff my way into another day as ice glints on the razor wire and the rifles note my numbed passage, silent but for my huffs and scuffle on the cracked, slippery sidewalk A new moon, veiled in wispy fog and beringed in glory, hangs over the prison, its gaudy glow taunting the halogen spotlights. The moon’s creamy pull upsets some liquid equilibrium within me and like tides, wolves and all manner of madmen, I surrender disturbed by the certainty that under the bony luminescence of a grinning moon The lunar deliriums grip me and I howl--once, then again, and surely somewhere an unbound sleeper stirs, penitence is dying a giddy death. I shake myself sane and as the echoes hang in the frigid air I explain to the wild-eyed guard that convicts, like all animals under the leash, must bay at the beauty beyond them.

Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams

With slouch and swing around the ring We trod the Fools’ Parade! We did not care: we knew we were The Devils’ Own Brigade: And shaven head and feet of lead Make a merry masquerade.

To delight the ear and the eye is a mere sensual indulgence;—true poetry strikes at the soul.

The answer to our existence lies in existence itself.

And when I stand in the receiving line like Jackie Kennedy without the pillbox hat, if Jackie were fat and had taken enough Klonopin to still an ox, and you whisper I think of you every day, don't finish with because I've been going to Weight Watchers on Tuesdays and wonder if you want to go too.

I am republic I am maoist I am activist and I am this and I am that but why? Why can't; I be

My art unkind, my energy all gone blind;The limbs uneven, the face shallower,Because those who I see are not seen,Those who see me are rude indeed. So blow, blow dear winter, just blow along me!

The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person...

Freedom is the dream you dream While putting thought in chains again --

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either

Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes, Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen, Ye wild whistly blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green crested lapwing thy screaming forbear, I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair. How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills, Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills; There daily I wander as noon rises high, My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye. How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, Where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow; There oft, as mild evening weeps over the lea, The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me. Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, And winds by the cot where my Mary resides; How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave. Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes, Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dreams.

Poetry is an orphan of silence.

Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.

I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.

rush of pine scent (once upon a time), the unlicensed conviction there ought to be another way of saying this.

For the beginning is assuredly the end- since we know nothing, pure and simple, beyond our own complexities.

They mutilate they torment each other with silences with words as if they had another life to live they do so as if they had forgotten that their bodies are inclined to death that the insides of men easily break down ruthless with each other they are weaker than plants and animals they can be killed by a word by a smile by a look

Amé, fuí amado, el sol acarició mi faz. ¡Vida, nada me debes! ¡Vida, estamos en paz! I loved, I was loved, the sun stroked my face. Life, you owe me nothing! Life, we are at peace!