freethepoets

[freethepoets]

“It’s the fourteenth of August, and I’m too hot To endure food, or bed. Steam and fear of scorpions Keep me awake. I’m told the heat won’t fade with Autumn. Swarms of flies arrive. I’m roped into my clothes. In another moment I’ll scream down the office As the paper mountains rise higher on my desk. O those real mountains to the south of here! I gaze at the ravines kept cool by pines. If I could walk on ice, with my feet bare!”

— Too Much Heat, Too Much Work, Tu Fu (712-770), Translated by Carolyn Kizer

[freethepoets]

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open”

— Muriel Rukeyser, from “Käthe Kollwitz,” in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

[freethepoets]

“How privileged you are, to be still passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. (…) Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.”

— Louise Glück, from October in “Poems 1962-2012″

[freethepoets]

“if there is a light then i am going to swallow it. if there is a god then i’m going to make him cry.”

— S. Osborn, blasphemies at the 5th street station (via cactuslungs)

[freethepoets]

“Here is the joy, here is the grief, here is the slaughter I have shaped into stars.”

— Jeremy Radin, from the collection ‘Dear Sal’, featured in NAILED Magazine (via medeae)

[freethepoets]

“I need a drink I need something worthless I need love that isn’t contingent upon some kind of loss”

— Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, “On Being Outed To My Family,” from There Should Be Flowers

[freethepoets]

“In what do you believe?In September’s slight motion of particulars, in the weight of birds, in lust, propulsion, maps that lie.”

— From Midwest Eclogue by Stacie Cassarino

[freethepoets]

I can feel in unspeakable colors and sulk with the great artists But talking is another country

— Annelyse Gelman, from “Meeting of the International Conference of International Psychiatry,” Heck Land: The Resorted Text

[freethepoets]

“Autumn approaches and the heart begins to dream–”

— Bashō, from The Sound of Water: Haiku by Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets (trans. Sam Hamill with illustrations by Kaji Aso)

[freethepoets]

i killed a plant once because i gave it too much water. lord, i worry that love is violence.

— José Olivarez, from “Getting Ready to Say I Love You to My Dad, It Rains,” Citizen Illegal

[freethepoets]

“It is fatal, this August—its heat climbs all the stairs of night, it doesn’t let me sleep.”

— Eugénio de Andrade, tr. by Alexis Levitin, from “In The Shadow,”

[freethepoets]

“you either love the world or you live in it all my poems are wild birds pecking eyeholes in the windows of hotels”

— sam sax, “Warning : Red Liquid,” from Madness

[freethepoets]

“Nothing sung under the cover of night has ever been cute. That star is probably dead by now. That road is probably much too far to walk. Fumble around in the dark. Pick up your teeth. It’s much too late to fall in love and I’m here trying to lie awake in peace. Go sigh somewhere else.”

— EVIL MTN, “An Untitled Country Song About The Moon,” from The Underground Library of Found Poetry

[freethepoets]

“What am I ready to lose in this advancing summer?”

— Audre Lorde, from Seasoning in “The Collected Poems Of Audre Lorde”

[freethepoets]

“I am desperately looking the other way so that love won’t see me.”

— From Written On The Body, by Jeanette Winterson

[freethepoets]

“August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”

— Sylvia Plath

[freethepoets]

“…the balm of sun and idle August afternoons…”

— Ray Bradbury, from Dandelion Wine