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Poems Quotes

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Poems Quotes

“I was 18 wen I started driving I was 18 the first time I was pulled over. It was 2 AM on a Saturday The officer spilled his lights all over my rearview mirror, he splashed out of the car with his hand already on his weapon, and looked at me the way a tsunami looks at a beach house. Immediately, I could tell he was the kind of man who brings a gun to a food fight. He called me son and I thought to myself, that's an interesting way of pronouncing "boy," He asks for my license and registration, wants to know what I'm doing in this nieghborhood, if the car is stolen, if I have any drugs and most days, I know how to grab my voice by the handle and swing it like a hammer. But instead, I picked it up like a shard of glass. Scared of what might happen if I didn't hold it carefully because I know that this much melanin and that uniform is a plotline to a film that can easily end with a chalk outline baptism, me trying to make a body bag look stylish for the camera and becoming the newest coat in a closet full of RIP hashtags. Once, a friend of a friend asked me why there aren't more black people in the X Games and I said, "You don't get it." Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America. We don't need to invent new ways of risking our lives because the old ones have been working for decades. Jim Crow may have left the nest, but our streets are still covered with its feathers. Being black in America is knowing there's a thin line between a traffic stop and the cemetery, it's the way my body tenses up when I hear a police siren in a song, it's the quiver in my stomach when a cop car is behind me, it's the sigh of relief when I turn right and he doesn't. I don't need to go volcano surfing. Hell, I have an adrenaline rush every time an officer drives right past without pulling me over and I realize I'm going to make it home safe. This time.”

PoetryPoemsRace And Racism In AmericaRace Relations In America
Book:Helium
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“At sixteen, poets think that if they publish in a magazine that will be it. When it happens, it is not it. Then they think it will be it when they publish in Poetry. No. The New Yorker? No. A book? Good reviews? The Something Prize? A Guggenheim? The National Book Award? The Nobel? No, no, no, no, no, no. Flying back from Stockholm, the Laureate knows that nothing will make it certain. The Laureate sighs.”

WritingSuccessRecognitionPoemsAwardsReviewsPoetsPublishingSelf DoubtPrizes
Book:Essays After Eighty
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“I have never cared for castles or a crown that grips too tight, Let the night sky be my starry roof and the moon my only light, My heart was born a Hero, My storm-bound sword won't rest, I left this harbour long ago on a never-ending quest. I am off to the horizon, Where the wild wind blows the foam, Come get lost with me, love, And the sea shall be our home.”

PoemsHow To Train Your Dragon
Book:How to Break a Dragon's Heart
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“December is... by Stewart Stafford December is all that we give, And whatever we receive, It is those who surround us, And those who have taken leave. December is celebrating light, Where only darkness dwells, It is the ripping of wrapping paper, And tempting culinary smells. December is letting go, Of all the past year's fails, And starting anew in January, As time again chases its tail. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.”

TimeFamilyPoemChristmasPoemsNew YearDecemberJanuaryChristmas SeasonWinter Poetry
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Suppose That I'm Inevitable Suppose that I'm inevitable Even the veins of my right hand Cross you from the drafts. On my smooth nails The breeze Which is not from the sky Is curving you Either the veins of my right hand Is running short On my pulse. Rolled along my fingers Vanished Not repeated forever For the second. I'm a half Since the first. The veins of my neck cross you all. If the warmth of my ten fingers Seized on your torn pieces of breath All is over With the dead-end alleys all in oblivion. (TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”

PoetryPoemsLove PoemsPersian PoetryIranian PoetsIranian Female Poets
Book:Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali
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“Like A Hanged Pitcher Like a hanged pitcher, No drink is pouring off me It's natural to get numbed gradually. Pig-headed seashells! This boasting sky, Is an anchor which has fallen on my lap This dizzy sky! The moon's been cleared A shadow's coming after me Barefooted on my dreams You used to run! Enjoyed?! Numb! All my veins are connected to this land... Like a hanged pitcher Joyful of this sky One day a huge whale swallowed it as a whole. And it was over! The Gulf was over! You waved hands. Like a hanged pitcher, It's simple! I lost the game And gambled away... (TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”

PoetryPoemsLove PoemsPoems On LovePersian PoetryIranian Poets
Book:Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali
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“The Last Street of Tehean Facing the airport, all that's now left in my grasp is a crumpled land that fits in the palm of my hand. Facing wavering sunbeams— a sun that is angry and mute. All the way from the salt sands of Dasht-e Lut, it came, the dream that forced my fingers' shift, that set my teeth on edge. A muted breeze, whirlwind spun from sand dunes all the way, even through the back alley. Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh? No longer than the palm of the hand, a short leap, exactly the length you had predicted. A huge grave in which to lay the longest night of the year to sleep. Sleep has quit our eyelids for other pastures, has dropped its anchor at the shores of garden ponds, has lost the chapped flaking of its lips, poor thing! Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh? With scissors - snip, snip - they are severing something. The alphabet shavings strewn on the ground, are they the letters that spell our family name? With every zig-zag, you cage my mother's breath, her footprints fading in the shifting sands. Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh? No. A strange land-shape form. I will not return. I left behind a shoe, one of a pair, for you to put on and follow after me. Translated from Persian to English by Franklin Lewis”

PoetryPoemsPersian PoetryUrban PoetryIranian PoetsCity Poems
Book:Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali
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“The Flintstone Block No.1: A whole nation has created the kindling Which owes you desperately But it hasn’t been specified Whether it’s the flintstone Or A firestorm? Block No.2: A piece of my happiness is in debt with the flintstone You’ve turned to the rocks But it’s for the flint stone. Block No.3: I’m in debt with the flintstone The whole world is in debt with the flintstone Block No.4: It has cast a spell For all your desires Behind the railing. Block No.5: I’m the mother of this Flintstone I’ve nourished it I’ve shed tears on it If the world is on fire I’m the one to blame. Block No.6: I’ve betrayed the heaven above God is disabled by it. Block No.7: And since then people have taken the vow of silence, … From 'Dating Noah’s Son' Rosa Jamali (TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”

PoetryPoemsPersian PoetryHaikusIranian Poets
Book:Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali
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“She is different...but she is smarter than their sisters... She is the one rose of roses... She is pretty and special flower... It´s a rose of roses She smiles...she take cares about herself...she has pretty voice...she loves herself...she lives forever... It´s a rose of roses...”

PoemsPoems On LifePoems On LovePoems About LovePoems On Life InspirationalPoems Of LovePoems With Feelings
Book:POEMS: STORIES ABOUT GODDESSES
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“welcome to my wormy hell. the music grinds off-key. fish eyes watch from the wall. this is where the last happy shot was fired. the mind snaps closed like a mind snapping closed. we need to discover a new will and a new way. we're stuck here now listening to the laughter of the gods. my temples ache with the fact of the facts. I get up, move about, scratch myself. I'm a pawn. I am a hungry prayer. my wormy hell welcomes you. hello, hello there. come in, come on in! plenty of room here for us all, sucker. we can only blame ourselves so come sit with me in the dark. it's half-past nowhere everywhere.”

PoemsBukowskiCome On In
Book:The Pleasures of the Damned
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“You may not be talking with each other. But that does not mean that you have stopped caring for her. She is capable of taking decisions for herself. She is capable of facing life all by herself. You want her to be free. You want her to find her own way. Just once in a while, let her know that you still care for her.”

PoemsLife And Living Life PhilosophyMeaningful LifeLove PoemsRelationships QuotesLife GoalsDeep Love QuotesDeep Thoughts EmotionsPoems For HerSet Her Free
Author:Avijeet Das
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“We choke on the ashes of our denial, clutching at the edges of recklessness as if it could make us immortal. We choose the ruinous path, not out of defiance, but desperation. To feel the sting of fire as it burns down our throats, to mistake the rush of adrenaline for vitality, to pretend that we are alive. Fear is a sweet poison. It courses through us like borrowed electricity, igniting what little remains of our spirit. It makes us feel invincible, young, whole, until it doesn’t.”

PowerMistakesDenialPoemsControlDesperationRecklessInvincibleRuin
Book:VERSES OF THE BROKEN: Echoes From A Fractured Mind
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