Poetry Quotes

“I heard the breeze whisper your name to the trees. And the flowers giggled smiling at the leaves. I and my loneliness keep talking about you.”

“He kissed her good morning like she was the reason sun decided to shine.”

“But I was youngand didn’t know betterand someone should have told me to capture every secondevery kiss & every nightBecause now I’m sitting here alone and it’s getting really hard to breath because tears are growing in my throat and they want to break out, but there are peoplewatchingand I just want to be somewhere silentsomewhere stillBut still I don’t want to be alone because I’m scared and lonelyand I don’t understandBecause I was alone my whole lifeMy whole lifeI was so damn lonely and I was content with thatbecause I liked myself and my own company and I didn’t need anyoneI thoughtBut then there was you .. ...So, someone should have told me that love is for those few brave who can handle the unbearable emptiness,the unbearable guilt and lack of oneself,Because I lost myself to someone I loveand I might get myself back one daybut it will take time, it will take time.This is gonna take some time.I wish someone would have told me this.Someone should have told me this.”

“I listen to a lot of hip hop artists, and I think hip hop and poetry go hand in hand. The 'Def Jam Poetry' on HBO is just so sick to me.”

“My grandmother would talk about having bananas at teatime and carrying palm fronds when the monsoon rains came, and I accepted all of those stories because they were like poetry.”

“Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart.”

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

“Live or die, but don't poison everything...Well, death's been herefor a long time --it has a hell of a lotto do with helland suspicion of the eyeand the religious objectsand how I mourned themwhen they were made obsceneby my dwarf-heart's doodle.The chief ingredientis mutilation.And mud, day after day,mud like a ritual,and the baby on the platter,cooked but still human,cooked also with little maggots,sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,the damn bitch!Even so,I kept right on going on,a sort of human statement,lugging myself as ifI were a sawed-off bodyin the trunk, the steamer trunk.This became perjury of the soul.It became an outright lieand even though I dressed the bodyit was still naked, still killed.It was caughtin the first place at birth,like a fish.But I play it, dressed it up,dressed it up like somebody's doll.Is life something you play?And all the time wanting to get rid of it?And further, everyone yelling at youto shut up. And no wonder!People don't like to be toldthat you're sickand then be forcedto watchyoucomedown with the hammer.Today life opened inside me like an eggand there insideafter considerable diggingI found the answer.What a bargain!There was the sun,her yolk moving feverishly,tumbling her prize --and you realize she does this daily!I'd known she was a purifierbut I hadn't thoughtshe was solid,hadn't known she was an answer.God! It's a dream,lovers sprouting in the yardlike celery stalksand better,a husband straight as a redwood,two daughters, two sea urchings,picking roses off my hackles.If I'm on fire they dance around itand cook marshmallows.And if I'm icethey simply skate on mein little ballet costumes.Here,all along,thinking I was a killer,anointing myself dailywith my little poisons.But no.I'm an empress.I wear an apron.My typewriter writes.It didn't break the way it warned.Even crazy, I'm as niceas a chocolate bar.Even with the witches' gymnasticsthey trust my incalculable city,my corruptible bed.O dearest three,I make a soft reply.The witch comes onand you paint her pink.I come with kisses in my hoodand the sun, the smart one,rolling in my arms.So I say Liveand turn my shadow three times roundto feed our puppies as they come,the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!Despite the pails of water that waited,to drown them, to pull them down like stones,they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blueand fumbling for the tiny tits.Just last week, eight Dalmatians,3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord woodeachlike abirch tree.I promise to love more if they come,because in spite of crueltyand the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.The poison just didn't take.So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,repeating The Black Mass and all of it.I say Live, Live because of the sun,the dream, the excitable gift.”

“The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid.Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant.The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation.”

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.”

“To them, eternal life beginsAnd God Himself shall wipe away all tears.”

“And watch two men washing clothes,one makes dry clothes wet. The other makes wet clothes dry. they seem to be thwarting each other, but their work is a perfect harmony.Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there's really only one work.”

“The past is uselessto me now:an old suitcasewith mould in the lining,heavy even when empty.”

“The ocean-blue bowl won’t refuse to bruise, won’t hold it back from the gaping earth-wounds.There will still come water, chill wind and happy goosebumps, and in the utmost corners of oaks, leaves laughing.”

“Music is the universal language of mankind.”

“I see your picture and in that picture I didn't see you.”

“I arise from dreams of thee,And a spirit in my feetHas led me- who knows how?To thy chamber-window, Sweet!”

“The best piece of life's magnificence is your slice of internal peace.”

“Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a woman-But who is that on the other side of you?”

“STAINSWith red clay between my toes,and the sun setting over my head,the ghost of my mother blows in,riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord,riding on a honeysuckle breeze.Her teeth, the keys of a piano.I play her grinning ivory noteswith cadenced fumbling fingers,splattered with paint, textured with scars.A song rises up from the belly of my pastand rocks me in the bosom of buried memories.My mama’s dress bears the stains of her life:blueberries, blood, bleach, and breast milk;She cradles in her arms a lifetime of love and sorrow;Its brilliance nearly blinds me.My fingers tire, as though I've played this song for years.The tune swells red, dying around the edges of a setting sun.A magnolia breeze blows in strong, a heavenly taxi sent to carry my mother home. She will not say goodbye.For there is no truth in spoken farewells.I am pregnant with a poem,my life lost in its stanzas.My mama steps out of her dressand drops it, an inheritance falling to my feet.She stands alone: bathed, blooming,burdened with nothing of this world.Her body is naked and beautiful,her wings gray and scorched,her brown eyes piercing the brown of mine.I watch her departure, her flapping wings:She doesn’t look back, not even once,not even to whisper my name: Brenda.I lick the teeth of my piano mouth.With a painter’s hands,with a writer’s handswith rusty wrinkled hands,with hands soaked in the joys,the sorrows, the spillsof my mother’s life,I pick up eighty-one years of stainsAnd pull her dress over my head.Her stains look good on me.”