Top quotes by Anne Sexton

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. Votes: 22

Death's in the good-bye. Votes: 17

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. Votes: 17

I will be steel! I will build a steel bridge over my need! I will build a bomb shelter over my heart! But my future is a secret. It is as shy as a mole. Votes: 17

God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer. Votes: 13

unless I can shake myself free of my dog, my flag, of my desk, my mind, I find life a bit of a drag. Not always, mind you. Usually I'm like my frying pan useful, graceful, sturdy and with no caper, no plan. Votes: 8

He turns the key.Presto!It opens this book of odd taleswhich transform the Brothers Grimm.Transform?As if an enlarged paper clipcould be a piece of sculpture.(And it could.) Votes: 7

I lay there silently,hoarding my small dignity.I did not ask about the gate or the closet.I did not question the bedtime ritualwhere, on the cold bathroom tiles,I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws.I did not knowthat my bones,those solids, those pieces of sculpturewould not splinter." Votes: 7

The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot. Votes: 6

I am not lazy. I am on the amphetamine of the soul. I am, each day, typing out the God my typewriter believes in. Votes: 6

Despite my asbestos gloves, the cough is filling me with black, and a red powder seeps through my veins.... Votes: 6

Blue eyes wash off sometimes. Votes: 6

Some women marry houses. It's another kind of skin; it has a heart, a mouth, a liver and bowel movements. Votes: 6

If the doctors cure then the sun sees it. If the doctors kill then the earth hides it. The doctors should fear arrogance more than cardiac arrest. Votes: 6

Some women marry houses. Votes: 5

I who was a house full of bowel movement, I who was a defaced altar, I who wanted to crawl toward God could not move nor eat bread. Votes: 5

God owns heaven but He craves the earth. Votes: 4

The joy that isn't shared dies young. Votes: 4

this is no dream just my oily life where the people are alibis and the street is unfindable for an entire lifetime. Votes: 3

stop the darkness and its amputations and find the real McCoy in the private holiness of my hands. Votes: 3

Let there be seasons so that our tongues will be rich in asparagus and limes. Votes: 3

Please God, we're all right here. Please leave us alone. Don't send death in his fat red suit and his ho-ho baritone. Votes: 3

All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.... I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out. Votes: 3

My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend that all's certain and good, that the marriage won't end. Votes: 3

The fish are naked. The fish are always awake. They are the color of old spoons and caramels. Votes: 3

Our checks are pale. Our wallets are invalids. Past due, past due, is what our bills are saying and yet we kiss in every corner, scuffing the dust and the cat. Love rises like bread as we go bust. Votes: 3

Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks. Votes: 2

And what of the dead? They lie without shoesin the stone boats. They are more like stonethan the sea would be if it stopped. They refuseto be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone. Votes: 1

The Witch's Life"When I was a childthere was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.All day she peered from her second storywindowfrom behind the wrinkled curtainsand sometimes she would open the windowand yell: Get out of my life!She had hair like kelpand a voice like a boulder.I think of her sometimes nowand wonder if I am becoming her. Votes: 1

Man is a bird full of mud, I say aloud. And death looks on with a casual eye and scratches his anus. Votes: 0

We are America. We are the coffin fillers. We are the grocers of death. We pack them in crates like cauliflowers. Votes: 0

I brush my hair, waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard, for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart and were screwed together. They will knit. And the other corpse, the fractured heart, I feed it piecemeal, little chalice. I'm good to it. Votes: 0

I tied down time with a rope but it came back. Then I put my head in a death bowl and my eyes shut up like clams. They didn't come back. Votes: 0

It is a dead heart. It is inside of me. It is a stranger yet once it was agreeable, opening and closing like a clam. Votes: 0

When someone kisses someone or flushes the toilet it is my other who sits in a ball and cries. My other beats a tin drum in my heart. My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep. My other cries and cries and cries when I put on a cocktail dress. Votes: 0

Every time I get happy the Nana-hex comes through. Birds turn into plumber's tools, a sonnet turns into a dirty joke, a wind turns into a tracheotomy, a boat turns into a corpse.... Votes: 0

The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood. Votes: 0

I did not know the woman I would be nor that blood would bloom in me each month like an exotic flower, nor that children, two monuments, would break from between my legs.... Votes: 0

emerald as heavy as a golf course, ruby as dark as an afterbirth, diamond as white as sun on the sea... Votes: 0

I'm an empress. I wear an apron. My typewriter writes. It didn't break the way it warned. Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar. Votes: 0

I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware... Votes: 0

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance. Votes: 0

What's missing is the eyeballs in each of us, but it doesn't matter because you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks. Votes: 0

Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins. Votes: 0

I am younger each year at the first snow. When I see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then I am in love again and very young and I believe everything. Votes: 0

I am younger each year at the first snow. Votes: 0

A woman / who loves a woman / is forever young. Votes: 0

If you meet a cross-eyed person you must plunge into the grass, alongside the chilly ants, fish through the green fingernails and come up with the four-leaf clover.... Votes: 0

O yellow eye, let me be sick with your heat, let me be feverish and frowning. Votes: 0

When the cow gives blood and the Christ is born we must all eat sacrifices. We must all eat beautiful women. Votes: 0

I am crazy as hell, but I know it. And knowing it is a kind of sanity that makes the sickness worse. Votes: 0

think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well: larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings! Votes: 0

All who love have lied. Votes: 0

We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it! Votes: 0

Blind with love, my daughter has cried nightly for horses, those long-necked marchers and churners that she has mastered, any and all, reigning them in like a circus hand.... Votes: 0

I can only sign over everything, the house, the dog, the ladders, the jewels, the soul, the family tree, the mailbox. Then I can sleep. Maybe. Votes: 0

Now I am just an elderly lady who is full of spleen, who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat, who never lived and yet outlived her time, hating men and dogs and Democrats. Votes: 0

It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious Votes: 0

God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went out of my fingers. They became stone. My body became a side of mutton and despair roamed the slaughterhouse. Votes: 0

The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. They take off shoes. They turn off the light. The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are overfed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Votes: 0

Yes, I know. Death sits with his key in my lock. Not one day is taken for granted. Even nursery rhymes have put me in hock. Votes: 0

I am alone here in my own mind. There is no map and there is no road. It is one of a kind just as yours is. Votes: 0

I would sell my life to avoid the pain that begins in the crib with its bars or perhaps with your first breath when the planets drill your future into you.... Votes: 0

The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death. Votes: 0

I want to kiss God on His nose and watch Him sneeze and so do you. Not out of disrespect. Out of pique. Out of a man-to-man thing. Votes: 0

Take a woman talking, purging herself with rhymes, drumming words out like a typewriter, planting words in you like grass seed. You'll move off. Votes: 0

The Witch's LifeWhen I was a childthere was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.All day she peered from her second storywindowfrom behind the wrinkled curtainsand sometimes she would open the windowand yell: Get out of my life!She had hair like kelpand a voice like a boulder.I think of her sometimes nowand wonder if I am becoming her. Votes: 0

Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark. Votes: 0

It is snowing and death bugs meas stubborn as insomnia. Votes: 0

We were fair game but we have kept out of the cesspool. We are strong. We are the good ones. Do not discover us for we lie together all in green like pond weeds. Hold me, my young dear, hold me. Votes: 0

Watch out for intellect,because it knows so much it knows nothingand leaves you hanging upside down,mouthing knowledge as your heartfalls out of your mouth. Votes: 0

I am stuffing your mouth with yourpromises and watching you vomit them out upon my face. Votes: 0

But suicides have a special language.Like carpenters they want to know which tools.They never ask why build.Twice I have so simply declared myself,have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,have taken on his craft, his magic. Votes: 0

God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. Votes: 0

My death from the wrists, two name tags, blood worn like a corsage to bloom one on the left and one on the right. Votes: 0

Father, you died once, salted down at fifty-nine, packed down like a big snow angel, wasn't that enough? Votes: 0

It's all a matter of history. Brandy is no solace. Librium only lies me down like a dead snow queen. Yes! I am still the criminal. Votes: 0

And thus Snow White became the prince's bride. The wicked queen was invited to the wedding feast and when she arrived there were red-hot iron shoes, in the manner of red-hot roller skates, clamped upon her feet. Votes: 0

O starry night, This is how I want to die Votes: 0

The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars. Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die. Votes: 0

Come, my pretender, my fritter, my bubbler, my chicken biddy! Oh succulent one, it is but one turn in the road and I would be a cannibal! Votes: 0

Oh sharp diamond, my mother! I could not count the cost of all your faces, your moods that present that I lost. Sweet girl, my deathbed, my jewel-fingered lady.... Votes: 0

pulling off the fat diamond engagement ring, pulling off the elopement wedding ring, and holding them, clicking them in thumb and forefinger, the indent of twenty-five years, like a tiny rip leaving its mark.... Votes: 0

Even without wars, life is dangerous. Votes: 0

Live or die, but don't poison everything. Votes: 0

As it has been said: Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love. Votes: 0

I am a collection of dismantled almosts. Votes: 0

I’m lost. And it’s my own fault. It’s about time I figured out that I can’t ask people to keep me found. Votes: 0

The snow has quietness in it; no songs, no smells, no shouts or traffic. When I speak my own voice shocks me. Votes: 0

I imitatea memory of beliefthat I do not own. Votes: 0

Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery. Votes: 0

Love? Be it man. Be it woman. It must be a wave you want to glide in on, give your body to it, give your laugh to it, give, when the gravelly sand takes you, your tears to the land. To love another is something like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. Votes: 0

Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice.... Votes: 0

I would like a simple life / yet all night I am laying / poems away in a long box. Votes: 0

Maybe I am becoming a hermit, opening the door for only a few special animals? Maybe my skull is too crowded and it has no opening through which to feed it soup? Votes: 0

She is so naked and singular. She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid. Votes: 0

A woman who writes feels too much. Votes: 0

You must be a poet, a lady of evil luck desiring to be what you are not, longing to be what you can only visit. Votes: 0

Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question. Votes: 0

The sanest thing in this world is love. Votes: 0

Our eyes are full of terrible confessions. Votes: 0

Somebody who should have been born is gone. Votes: 0

Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours. Votes: 0

At six I lived in a graveyard full of dolls, avoiding myself, my body, the suspect in its grotesque house. Votes: 0

I’ll put it out there: I am scarred by the nostalgic indicipherability of my own desires; I an engulfed by the intimidating unknown, pushed through darkness and dragged down by the irretrievable past sweetness of my memories. Votes: 0

All day I've built a lifetime and now the sun sinks to undo it. Votes: 0

The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not. Votes: 0

Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far ... Votes: 0

I'm hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one, because behind everything that happens to you, there is another truth, a secret life. Votes: 0

...became a woman who learned her own skin and dug into her soul and found it full. Votes: 0

Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like...you think they know something, but usually they are just messes. Votes: 0

When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do. Votes: 0

As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off. Votes: 0

I think it will be a miracle if I don't someday end up killing myself. Votes: 0

All I am is the trick of words writing themselves. Votes: 0

I'm the crazy one who thinks that words reach people. Votes: 0

The summer has seized you, as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw lemons as large as your desk-side globe-that miniature map of the world-and I could mention, too, the market stalls of mushrooms and garlic bugs all engorged. Or I even think of the orchard next door, where the berries are done and the apples are beginning to swell. And once, with our first backyard,I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans we couldn't eat. Votes: 0

Even so, I must admire your skill. You are so gracefully insane. Votes: 0

I leave you, home, when I'm ripped from the doorstep by commerce or fate. Then I submit to the awful subway of the world.... Votes: 0

One can't build little white picket fences to keep nightmares out. Votes: 0

To tell the truth Votes: 0

It is June. I am tired of being brave. Votes: 0

In a dream you are never eighty. Votes: 0

I raise my pelvis to God so that it may know the truth of how flowers smash through the long winter. Votes: 0

Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself, Counting this row and that row of moccasins Waiting on the silent shelf. Votes: 0

Frog has no nerves. Frog is as old as a cockroach. Frog is my father's genitals. Frog is a malformed doorknob. Frog is a soft bag of green. Votes: 0

Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven. Votes: 0

The silence is death. It comes each day with its shock to sit on my shoulder, a white bird, and peck at the black eyes and the vibrating red muscle of my mouth. Votes: 0

Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed but this is the typewriter that sits before me and love is where yesterday is at. Votes: 0

Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem. Votes: 0

Poetry is my life, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face. Votes: 0

I hoard books. They are people who do not leave. Votes: 0

Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery. Votes: 0

Everyone has left me except my muse, that good nurse. She stays in my hand, a mild white mouse. Votes: 0

The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not. The trade winds blow me, and I do not know where the land is; the waves fold over each other; they are in love with themselves; sleeping in their own skin; and I float over them and I do not know about tomorrow. Votes: 0

To be without God is to be a snake / who wants to swallow an elephant. Votes: 0

To love another is somethinglike prayer and it can't be planned, you just fallinto its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. Votes: 0

Craft is a trick you make up to let you write the poem. Votes: 0

I wonder if the artist ever lives his life--he is so busy recreating it. Votes: 0

Poems aren't postcards to send home. Votes: 0

Today God gives milk / and I have the pail. Votes: 0

They [daisies] are my favorite flower. There is something innocent and vulnerable about them as if they thanked you for admiring them. Votes: 0

Mood can be as important as sense. Votes: 0

Earth, earthriding your merry-go-roundtoward extinction,right to the rootsthickening the oceans like gravy,festering in your caves,you are becoming a latrine. Votes: 0

After a disaster strikes, it can be very devastating and very challenging. You're going to need a lot of strength and energy, and the American Red Cross suggests you go for the high protein items. Votes: 0

The ground has on its clothes. The trees poke out of sheets and each branch wears the sock of God. Votes: 0

Fear / a motor, / pumps me around and around / until I fade slowly ... Votes: 0

I cannot walk an inch / without trying to walk to God. Votes: 0

I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws. Votes: 0

I grow old on my bitterness. Votes: 0

My eyes, those sluts, those whores, would play no more. Votes: 0

There is rust in my mouth,the stain of an old kiss. Votes: 0

God is only mocked by believers. Votes: 0

Here in the hospital, I say,that is not my body, not my body.I am not here for the doctorsto read like a recipe. Votes: 0

The little girl skipped by under the wrinkled oak leaves and held fast to a replica of herself. Votes: 0

Thief!- how did you crawl into, crawl down alone into the death I wanted so badly and for so long ... Votes: 0

Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there. Votes: 0

And tonight our skin, our bones, that have survived our fathers, will meet, delicate in the hold, fastened together in an intricate lock. Then one of us will shout, "My need is more desperate!" and I will eat you slowly with kisses even though the killer in you has gotten out. Votes: 0

Suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build. Votes: 0

Not that it was beautiful, but that, in the end, there was a certain sense of order there; something worth learning in that narrow diary of my mind Votes: 0

I like you; your eyes are full of language." [Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.] Votes: 0

Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen. Votes: 0

I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter. Votes: 0

She suffers according to the digits of my hate. I hear the filaments of alabaster. I would lie down with them and lift my madness off like a wig. I would lie outside in a room of wool and let the snow cover me. Paris white or flake white or argentine, all in the washbasin of my mouth, calling “Oh.” I am empty. I am witless. Death is here. There is no other settlement. Votes: 0

Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly. Votes: 0

Look to your heart that flutters in and out like a moth. God is not indifferent to your need. You have a thousand prayers but God has one. Votes: 0

Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me. Votes: 0

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float. Votes: 0

Talk to me about sadness. I talk about it too much in my own head but I never mind others talking about it either; I occasionally feel like I tremendously need others to talk about it as well. Votes: 0

Fee-fi-fo-fum - Now I'm borrowed. Now I'm numb. Votes: 0

If I could blame it on all the mothers and fathers of the world, they of the lessons, the pellets of power, they of the love surrounding you like batter ... Blame it on God perhaps? He of the first opening that pushed us all into our first mistakes? No, I'll blame it on Man For Man is God and man is eating the earth up like a candy bar and not one of them can be left alone with the ocean for it is known he will gulp it all down. The stars (possibly) are safe. At least for the moment. The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death. Votes: 0

sorrow is easier than guilt. Votes: 0

Love your self's self where it lives. Votes: 0

The body is a damn hard thing to kill. Votes: 0

The windows, the starving windows that drive the trees like nails into my heart. Votes: 0

I tell you what you’ll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go. Votes: 0

My sleeping pill is white. It is a splendid pearl; it floats me out of myself, my stung skin as alien as a loose bolt of cloth. Votes: 0

When they turn the sun on again I'll plant children under it, I'll light up my soul with a match and let it sing.... Votes: 0

I remember the stink of the liverwurst. How I was put on a platter and laid between the mayonnaise and the bacon. The rhythm of the refrigerator had been disturbed. Votes: 0

There is hope. There is hope everywhere. Today God give milk and I have the pail. Votes: 0

What a lay me down this is with two pink, two orange, two green, two white goodnights. Votes: 0

Thumbs grow into my throat. I wear slaps like a spot of rouge. Votes: 0

I'll Votes: 0

The day of fire is coming, the thrush will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket.... Votes: 0

There is no word for time. Today we will not think to number another summer or watch its white bird into the ground. Votes: 0

Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs, whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle.... Votes: 0

Today is made of yesterday, each time I steal toward rites I do not know, waiting for the lost ingredient, as if salt or money or even lust would keep us calm and prove us whole at last. Votes: 0

Nature is full of teeth that come in one by one, then decay, fall out. Votes: 0

Rocks crumble, make new forms, oceans move the continents, mountains rise up and down like ghosts yet all is natural, all is change. Votes: 0

Jewels! Today each twig is important, each ring, each infection, each form is all that the gods must have meant. Votes: 0

I put the gold star up in the front window beside the flag. Alterations is what I know and what I did: hems, gussets and seams. Votes: 0

I love the word warm. It is almost unbearable-- so moist and breathlike. Votes: 0

Take adultery or theft. Merely sins. It is evil who dines on the soul, stretching out its long bone tongue. It is evil who tweezers my heart, picking out its atomic worms. Votes: 0

Then God spoke to me and said: People say only good things about Christmas. If they want to say something bad, they whisper. Votes: 0

I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates. Votes: 0

I sit at my desk Votes: 0

I am torn in two but I will conquer myself. Votes: 0

Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen with cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks of Rockport. Votes: 0

To die whole, riddled with nothing but desire for it, is like breakfast after love. Votes: 0

Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen.... Votes: 0

But even in a telephone booth evil can seep out of the receiver and we must cover it with a mattress, and then tear it from its roots and bury it, bury it. Votes: 0

The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died. Votes: 0

My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat. Votes: 0

I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer! Votes: 0

My mouth blooms like a cut. Votes: 0

My safe, safe psychosis is broken. It was hard. It was made of stone. It covered my face like a mask. But it has cracked. Votes: 0

Of course the New Testament is very small. Its mouth opens four times as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster, yet somehow man-made.... Votes: 0

Once upon a time we were all born, popped out like jelly rolls forgetting our fishdom, the pleasuring seas, the country of comfort, spanked into the oxygens of death.... Votes: 0

Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses. Votes: 0

I see myself as one would see another. I have been cut in two. Votes: 0

There is joy in all: in the hair I brush each morning, in the Cannon towel, newly washed, that I rub my body with each morning.... Votes: 0

Inside many of us is a small old man who wants to get out. Votes: 0

When I lie down to love, old dwarf heart shakes her head. Like an imbecile she was born old. Votes: 0

Take the brown eyes of my father, those gun shots, those mean muds. Bury them. Take the blue eyes of my mother, naked as the sea.... Votes: 0

O fallen angel, the companion within me, whisper something holy before you pinch me into the grave. Votes: 0

I think of myself as writing for one person, that one perfect reader who understands and loves. Votes: 0

Today life opened inside me like an egg ... Votes: 0

One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is "Whatever you do, don't be boring." Votes: 0

Though rain curses the window let the poem be made. Votes: 0

It would be pleasant to be drunk. Votes: 0

Images are probably the most important part of the poem. First of all you want to tell a story, but images are what are going to shore it up and get to the heart of the matter. Votes: 0

Bless all useful objects, the spoons made of bone, the mattress I cook my dreams upon, the typewriter that is my church with an altar of keys always waiting. Votes: 0

Poor thing. To die and never see Brooklyn. Votes: 0

Loving me with my shoes off means loving my long brown legs, sweet dears, as good as spoons; and my feet, those two children let out to play naked. Votes: 0

I have forgiven all the old actors for dying. A new one comes on with the same lines, like large white growths, in his mouth. The dancers come on from the wings, perfectly mated. Votes: 0

Need is not quite belief. Votes: 0

it was my first doll that water went into and water came out of much earlier it was the diaper I wore and the dirt thereof and my mother hating me for it Votes: 0

Oh thumb, I want a drink it is dark, where are the big people, when will I get there...? Votes: 0

Why are all these dolls falling out of the sky? Was there a father? Or have the planets cut holes in their nets and let our childhood out, or are we the dolls themselves, born but never fed? Votes: 0

bike downtown, stick out tongues at the Catholics. Or form a Piss Club where we all go in the bushes and peek at each other's sex. Votes: 0

The sky breaks. It sags and breathes upon my face. in the presence of mine enemies, mine enemies The world is full of enemies. There is no safe place. Votes: 0

You cutting the lawn, fixing the machines, all this leprous day and then more vodka, more soda and the pond forgiving our bodies, the pond sucking out the throb. Votes: 0

you see, we live in a cold climate and are not permitted to kiss on the street so I made up a song that wasn't true. I made up a song called Marriage. Votes: 0

the marriage twists, holds firm, a sailor's knot. Votes: 0

My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend Votes: 0

psychiatry is a dirty mirror ... Votes: 0

Maybe, although my heart is a kitten of butter, I am blowing it up like a zeppelin. Votes: 0

the heart, this child of myself that resides in the flesh, this ultimate signature of the me, the start of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche. Votes: 0

Big heart, wide as a watermelon, but wise as birth, there is so much abundance in the people I have.... Votes: 0

There is a good look that I wear like a blood clot. I have sewn it over my left breast. I have made a vocation of it. Votes: 0

Dead drunk is the term I think of, insensible, neither cool nor warm, without a head or a foot. To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool. Votes: 0

And within the house ashes are being stuffed into my marriage, fury is lapping the walls, dishes crack on the shelves, a strangler needs my throat, the daughter has ceased to eat anything.... Votes: 0

Rejoice with the day lily for it is born for a day to live by the mailbox and glorify the roadside Votes: 0

I would like to think that no one would die anymore if we all believed in daisies but the worms know better, don't they? They slide into the ear of a corpse and listen to his great sigh. Votes: 0

Daisies in water are the longest lasting flower you can give to someone. Fact. Buy daisies. Not roses. Votes: 0

I am tearing the feathers out of the pillows, waiting, waiting for Daddy to come home and stuff me so full of our infected child that I turn invisible, but married, at last. Votes: 0

[I] have fantasies of killing myself and thus being the powerful one not the powerless one. Votes: 0

I am so imperfect, can you love me when really my soul is deformed? Will you love me anyhow? Votes: 0

And the aura of you remains, remains, remains… Votes: 0

... a starving man doesn't ask what the meal is. Votes: 0

... man is eating the earth up like a candy bar. Votes: 0

The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives Votes: 0

the man inside of woman ties a knot so that they will never again be separate… Votes: 0

The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up. Votes: 0

For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling. Votes: 0

I love you. You are closest to my heart, closer than any other human being. You are my extension. You are my prayer. You are my belief in God. For better or worse you inherit me. Votes: 0

Daylight is nobody's friend. God comes in like a landlord and flashes on his brassy lamp. Votes: 0

We are all writing God's poem. Votes: 0

Take your foot out of the graveyard, they are busy being dead. Votes: 0

Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren Votes: 0

I am not at home in myself. I am my own stranger. Votes: 0

It's a little mad, but I believe I am many people. When I am writing a poem, I feel I am the person who should have written it. Votes: 0

Poetry to me is prayer ... Votes: 0

I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any one of us - or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem - a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer - it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem. Votes: 0

I must always forget how one word is able to pick out another, to manner another, until I have got something I might have said... but did not. Votes: 0

Letters are false really - they are expressions of the way you wish you were instead of the way you are ... Votes: 0

In a letter (no matter how quickly it is written or honestly or freely or lovingly) it is more possible to be loving and lovable, more possible to reach out and to take in ... I feel I have somehow deceived you into thinking this is really a human relationship. It is a letter relationship between humans ... Votes: 0

Be careful of words, / ... they can be both daisies and bruises. Votes: 0

But my future is a secret. / It is as shy as a mole. Votes: 0

I am in my own mind. I am locked in the wrong house. Votes: 0

The soul was not cured, it was as full as a clothes closet of dresses that did not fit. Votes: 0

I've grown tired of love You are the trouble with me I watch you walk right by Votes: 0

There once was a miller with a daughter as lovely as a grape. He told the king that she could spin gold out of common straw. The king summoned the girl and locked her in a room full of straw and told her to spin it into gold or she would die like a criminal. Poor grape with no one to pick. Luscious and round and sleek. Poor thing. To die and never see Brooklyn. (Rumpelstiltskin) Votes: 0

Yes I try to kill myself in small amounts, an innocuous occupation. Actually I'm hung up on it. Votes: 0

I am teaching...It's kind of like having a love affair with a rhinoceros. Votes: 0

You lay, a small knuckle on my white bed; lay, that fist like a snail, small and strong at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed with love. At first, hunger is not wrong. Votes: 0

You who have inhabited me in the deepest and most broken place, are going, going Votes: 0

I rot on the wall, my own Dorian Gray. Votes: 0

And if I tried to give you something else, something outside myself, you would not know that the worst of anyone can be, finally, an accident of hope Votes: 0

I suffer for birds and fireflies but not frogs, she said, and threw him across the room. Kaboom! Like a genie out of a samovar, a handsome prince arose in the corner of the bedroom. Votes: 0

And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself Votes: 0

Well, one gets out of bed and the planets don't always hiss or muck up the day, each day. Votes: 0

I have been cut in two. Votes: 0

Oh, darling, let your body in, let it tie you in, in comfort. Votes: 0

Yet love enters my blood like an I.V., dripping in its little white moments. Votes: 0

As a writer one has to take the chance on being a fool. Votes: 0

being sixteen in the pants I died full of questions Votes: 0

... and my love stays bitterly glowing, spasms of it will not sleep, and I am helpless and thirsty and need shade but there is no one to cover me- not even God. Votes: 0

Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains. Votes: 0

The place I live in is a kind of maze and I keep seeking the exit or the home. Votes: 0

I try to take care and be gentle to them. Words and eggs must be handled with care. Once broken they are impossible things to repair. Votes: 0

All in all, I'd say, the world is strangling. Votes: 0

My heart is on a budget. It keeps me on the brink. Votes: 0

Don’t worry if they say you’re crazy. They said that about me and yet I was saner than all of them. I knew. No matter. You know. Insane or sane, you know. It’s a good thing to know - no matter what they call it. Votes: 0

My life has appeared unclothed in court, detail by detail, death-bone witness by death-bone witness, and I was shamed at the verdict.... Votes: 0

God went out of me Votes: 0

True. There is a beautiful Jesus. He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef. How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in! How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes! But I can't. Need is not quite belief. Votes: 0

Let the light be called Day so that men may grow corn or take busses. Votes: 0

I burn the way money burns. Votes: 0

It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk. Votes: 0

Rats live on no evil star Votes: 0

Somebody who should have been born is gone. Yes, woman, such logic will lead to loss without death. Or say what you meant, you coward . . . this baby that I bleed. Votes: 0

No one to hate except the slim fish of memory that slides in and out of my brain. Votes: 0

we do not explain my husband's insane abuse and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead. Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use. Votes: 0

I was the girl of the chain letter, the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes, the one of the telephone bills, the wrinkled photo and the lost connections.... Votes: 0

Everyone in me is a bird I am beating all my wings Votes: 0

My ideas are a curse. They spring from a radical discontent with the awful order of things. I play clown. I play carpenter. I play nurse. I play witch. Votes: 0

What's the point of fighting the dollars when all you need is a warm bed? When the dog barks you let him in. All we need is someone to let us in. And one other thing: to consider the lilies in the field. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. Votes: 0

the trouble with therapy is that it makes life go backwards ... Votes: 0

Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone. Votes: 0

My business is words. Words are like labels, or coins, or better, like swarming bees. Votes: 0

Poets are sitting in my kitchen. Why do these poets lie? Why do children get children and Did you hear what it said? Votes: 0

This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star. Votes: 0

I said, the poets are there I hear them singing and lying around their round table and around me still. Votes: 0

With this pen I take in hand my selves and with these dead disciples I will grapple. Though rain curses the window let the poem be made. Votes: 0

All considerations for these human remains! They must have an escort! They are classified! Votes: 0

I was only sitting here in my white study Votes: 0

I tell it stories now and then and feed it images like honey. I will not speculate today with poems that think they're money. Votes: 0

For forty days, for forty nights Jesus put one foot in front of the other and the man he carried, if it was a man, became heavier and heavier. Votes: 0

Women tell time by the body. They are like clocks. They are always fastened to the earth, listening for its small animal noises. Votes: 0

women are born twice. Votes: 0

Depression is boring, I think and I would do better to make some soup and light up the cave. Votes: 0

Now that I have written many words, and let out so many loves, for so many, and been altogether what I always was a woman of excess, of zeal and greed, I find the effort useless. Votes: 0

In an old time there was a king as wise as a dictionary. Votes: 0

Someone is dead. Even the trees know it, those poor old dancers who come on lewdly, all pea-green scarfs and spine pole. Votes: 0

Jesus saw the multitudes were hungry and He said, Oh Lord, send down a short-order cook. Votes: 0

Home is my Bethlehem, my succoring shelter, my mental hospital, my wife, my dam, my husband, my sir, my womb, my skull. Votes: 0

There is an animal inside me, clutching fast to my heart, a huge crab. Votes: 0

The Saints come, as human as a mouth, with a bag of God in their backs, like a hunchback, they come, they come marching in. Votes: 0

Watch out for love (unless it is true, and every part of you says yes including the toes), it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream won't be heard and none of your running will run. Votes: 0

I, in my brand new body, which was not a woman's yet, told the stars my questions and thought God could really see the heat and the painted light, elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight. Votes: 0

Now, in my middle age, about nineteen in the head I'd say, I am rowing, I am rowing.... Votes: 0

All the oxygen of the world was in them. All the feet of the babies of the world were in them. All the crotches of the angels of the world were in them. All the morning kisses of Philadelphia were in them. Votes: 0

Let God be some tribal female who is known but forbidden. Votes: 0

I would like to bury Votes: 0

Evil is maybe lying to God. Or better, lying to love. Votes: 0

I am out of practice at living. You are as brave as a motorcycle. Votes: 0

Suddenly I'm not half the girl I used to be. There's a shadow hanging over me . . . From me to you out of my electric devil.... Votes: 0

No matter whose bed you die in the bed will be yours for your voyage onto the surgical andiron of God. Votes: 0

My faith is a great weight hung on a small wire, as doth the spider hang her baby on a thin web. Votes: 0