poetry loves

"My answer, then, as you may have guessed, is very simple. I write in service of illumination and memory. I write to reach into ‘the blind world where no one can help.’ I write because it is a way of glimpsing the truth. And I write to create something of beauty."

"All for a moment wavered and bent in uncertainty and ambiguity, as if a great moth sailing through the room had shadowed the immense solidity of chairs and tables with floating wings."

"I sing my song by the fire like an old shell murmuring on the beach."

"Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body. Your Morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before I met you, I relied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm, you play upon me, drumming me taut."

"Do you understand, do you understand, my dear sir, what it means when there is no longer anywhere to go?"

"This is how you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space between them."

"It’s only husbands and wives who kiss like that, to brush the dust off each other’s lips…I want you to kiss me so that the young blossoms on this apple tree above us fall to the ground…"

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

"Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words."

"In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble."

"There is something maddeningly attractive about the untranslatable, about a word that goes silent in transit."

"You play along,
because you want to die for love,
you always have."

"…throw roses into the abyss and say: ‘here is my thanks to the monster who didn’t succeed in swallowing me alive.’"

"Between melting and freezing
The soul’s sap quivers."

"I am more interested in human beings than in writing, more interested in lovemaking than in writing, more interested in living than in writing."