Inspirational Poetry Quotes

Poetry is best written with the growl and the gut. The heart and the head should be the realm to the reader. ~ Jeremy Young

You
not wanting me
was
the beginning of me
wanting myself
thank you ~ Nayyirah Waheed

Are they beautiful?
The lines left from suffering,
Scars of emptiness. ~ Tyler Knott Gregson

I am a hole in the flute that the Christ's breath moves through listen to this music

I am the concert from the mouth of every creature
singing with the myriad chorus

Quote by Hafiz ~ Hafez

We each bring our own unique beauty to the world, and how blessed we are to have the freedom to find that beauty in each other. ~ Heather K. O'Hara

Everything is nothing. ~ Azaam Yahoo

Stand by a moment while I take my place, in this universe of understated grace, and in the mirror of my eyes, behold your face. ~ Alida Van Braeden

For poetry and I are one
To separate is to decapitate
For my poetry is forever. ~ Kerry D. Brackett

To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity. ~ Dan Simmons

We must experience certain things in life, even in our childhood, so we can later look back and value the journey. ~ Tanya R. Liverman

Come gaze about aged churchyard and behold
Those vanish'd hours of lead and hours of gold. ~ Timothy Salter

A person who wants a pure and simple life can start a war within themselves and with society ~ Lisa C. Miller

Self-care is taking all the pressures you are facing right now, and deciding to which you will respond, and how. ~ Imani Shola

Wherever the hope of glory lives, hopelessness passes away. ~ Nadine C. Keels

This is my song for Gabriel,
The Angel of the Word,
I've sung to you so many times,
This time I may be heard.
I sing to you from fellowship,
Past times I sang alone,
But now I can extend my love
To wood and air and stone.
Your golden wings have cradled me,
Your voice has made me kneel,
Your actions turn the universe,
Your wisdom spins the wheel.

This is my song for Abraham,
The shepherd of mankind,
You led your tribe out from Canaan,
And none were left behind.
O, come, fulfil your prophecies,
And say the war is won,
Must I wait in vales of visions,
And leave my song undone? ~ Philip Dodd

Nothing of heaven or earth
Can take this heart
Filled with love
Nothing of heaven or earth
Can divide us
From cosmic energy ~ Ilchi Lee

Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit. ~ Damon Galgut

You are now 18
standing on the precipice,
trembling before your own greatness.

This is your call to leap.

There will always being those
who say you are too young and delicate
to make anything happen for yourself.
They don't see the part of you that smolders.
Don't let their doubting drown out
the sound of your own heartbeat.

You are the first drop of a hurricane.

Your bravery builds beyond you
You are needed by all the little girls
still living in secret, writing oceans
made of monsters and
throwing like lightening.

You don't need to grow up to find greatness.

You are stronger than the world
has ever believed you to be.
The world is waiting for you to set it on fire
Trust in yourself
and burn. ~ Clementine Von Radics

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

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. ~ Rumi

Be who you are, not who you are forced to be... ~ Stef Schuurman

O fish! The bated hook is not your friend!
Go deep, go deep. ~ Rumi

Title: Blue Light Lounge Sutra For The Performance Poets At Harold Park Hotel

the need gotta be
so deep words can't
answer simple questions
all night long notes
stumble off the tongue
& color the air indigo
so deep fragments of gut
& flesh cling to the song
you gotta get into it
so deep salt crystalizes on eyelashes
the need gotta be
so deep you can vomit up ghosts
& not feel broken
till you are no more
than a half ounce of gold
in painful brightness
you gotta get into it
blow that saxophone
so deep all the sex & dope in this world
can't erase your need
to howl against the sky
the need gotta be
so deep you can't
just wiggle your hips
& rise up out of it
chaos in the cosmos
modern man in the pepperpot
you gotta get hooked
into every hungry groove
so deep the bomb locked
in rust opens like a fist
into it into it so deep
rhythm is pre-memory
the need gotta be basic
animal need to see
& know the terror
we are made of honey
cause if you wanna dance
this boogie be ready
to let the devil use your head
for a drum ~ Yusef Komunyakaa

Whenever life is getting tough hold on.
Don't let it get the best of you stay strong. ~ Laqueisha Malone

I could not have climbed any mountains while looking from the ground ... I would not have flown ... or dived ... or surfed ... or swum ... I am not a tourist nor a spectator ... this is the life I have left, and I will not waste it like some rubber-neck ~ Kem

To the delicate,
You will fall for the rough ones. the cold ones. the ones filled with apathy. you will spend your time counting their affection in change. you will stuff your pockets with silence. you will settle for second hand love. Delicate, you will be fashioned in the art of forgiveness. you will love like it's a religion. you will memorize birthdays, phone numbers, and the moments you've heard goodbye. and when life becomes unyielding, and the burden too heavy, you will fault yourself. blame the material you are made of. say that you rip too easy, expect too much, give too often. you are a well that keeps on leaking.
but even if you overflow, even if the thunder finds your home, you must remain soft. and if they have broken your heart, allow it to make you softer. kinder. do not imitate the cruel. do not allow yourself to take the shape of those who hurt you. ~ Sabah Khodir

It could be said that a single person has written all the books in the world such central unity is in them that they are undeniably the work of a single all-knowing master. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost.
If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

O May my Song arise like Morning day,
And bid me look upon the break of light. ~ Timothy Salter

Poetry: Language against which we have no defences. ~ David Whyte

Saints"

Thank God for all who give relief
for those who really care
Who put their arms around the weak
and plead for them in prayer

Thank God for those who hear the heart
and listen to the words
Who know a look or gentle touch
mean more than all the world

Thank God for those who lift the hands
and strengthen feeble knees
Who go about restoring souls
in quiet ministry. ~ Thomas L. Kay

What angel is this
who losing its way,
fell int the Time of my Life.

Fell out of its world and into my spring
a flower to color it in. ~ Anna-Karen Sorensen

The Working Song
by Breton Braley

Oh, we're sick to death of the style of song
That's only a sort of a simpering song,
A kissy song and a sissy song
Or a weepy, creepy, whimpering song.
So give us a lift of a lusty song,
A boisterous, bubbling, boiling song,
Or a smashing song and a dashing song,
Oh, give us the tang of a toiling song,
The chanty loud of the working crowd,
The thunderous thrall of a toiling song!

Ay, sing us a joyous daring song,
Not a moaning, groaning, fretting song,
But a ringing song, and a swinging song,
A rigorous, vigorous, sweating song.
We have had enough of the gypsy song,
Which is only a lazy, shirking song,
So toughen your throat to a rougher note
And give us the tune of a working song,
A tune of strife and the joy of life,
The beat and throb of a working song! ~ Berton Braley

I sing and drink,
giving no thought to death;
with arms outspread
I fall upon the grass,
and if, in this wide world, I come to die,
then it's certain to be
from sheer joy that I live. ~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Count the cost of your calling, find the value of your dream, and most of all find your place in His love. ~ Deborah Brodie

Celebrate one soul, touch one heart, light one lamp; and the whole universe moves. ~ Heather K. O'Hara

Love is a strange creature that no man can understand ~ Lisa C. Miller

What is the savior of the world doing among these wire fences, in all this broken glass? ~ Janet McAdams

Just keep waking up,
dragging yourself out of bed.
It will get better. ~ Tyler Knott Gregson

When your mind is free of the incessant chatter from our inner critics, we are better able to attend to being our most authentic selves and to enjoy life and all it has to offer. ~ Laurie J. Beck

It's not what you go through that makes you strong: it is how you handle the situation that gives you strength. ~ Tanya R. Liverman

Everyone has it
To know what it is.
Take a journey deep within
And open your eyes wide.
Then you will see everything. ~ Ilchi Lee

We are the instruments of genius, yet more the rhythm and less the drum as each expanding beat arises. ~ Heather K. O'Hara

The deeper you look into Truth; your reflection of self disappears. ~ Deborah Brodie

Inside your heart
A golden flower blossoms;
Inside of me
And inside of you
Never dying ...
This flower of your soul ~ Ilchi Lee

Thus the sons of earth now drink in
The fire of heaven without danger.
And it is our duty, poets, to stand
Bare-headed under the storms of God,
Grasping with our own hand
The Father's beam itself,
And to offer the gift of heaven,
Wrapped in song, to the people.
From "As On a Holiday" ("Wie Wenn am Feiertage") ~ Friedrich Holderlin

The one who pulls the puppet strings knows fairytales can heal. ~ Sally Odgers

Glory be to God for dappled things.
("Pied Beauty") ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

In your sky, you are the brightest star.
Without you light, it's dark like tar.
So love yourself to enlighten others. ~ Debasish Mridha

Neither pathway is correct. ~ Azaam Yahoo

Those who lead us to our sacred selves walk not before us, but beside. ~ Heather K. O'Hara

Jenny Chen Is An Ordinary Girl. Or Else That's What Everyone Thinks. Yes, Jenny Is A Drug Dealer And Slave Trader. She Likes To Act Innocent, Always Smiling, Even When Xin Yu Gong Whacks Her Like There's No Tomorrow. That Is All A Ruse To Hide Her Secretly Evil Disposition. She Is Powerful, Holding All The Chains To Expose Government Corruption. Heck, She Even Ordered Every Letter To Be Written As A Capital For Every New Word. Her Word Is Law. She Is Supreme, Compared To Us Peasants. She Is Jenny Whenny Chen, Drug Dealer Extraordinaire And Slave Trader of The Zong Ship. ~ E.G. Taylor

I put an apple on my table. Then I put myself inside this apple. What tranquility! ~ Henri Michaux

Too long now things divine have been cheaply used
And all the power of heaven, the kindly, spent
In trifling waste by cold and cunning
Men without thanks, who when he, the Highest,
In person tills their field for them, think they know
the daylight and the Thunderer, and indeed
Their telescope may find them all, may
Count and may name every star of heaven.
Yet will the Father cover with holy night,
That we may last on earth, our too knowing eyes.
... Never will our
Free-ranging power coerce his heaven.
From "The Poet's Vocation" ("Dichterberuf") ~ Friedrich Holderlin

I don't write poems
to melt your heart.
I write them,
so our hearts
can melt together. ~ Subhan Zein

We too, like trees can shake off our dead leaves and begin again. ~ A.Y. Greyson

Who I am remains to be seen - and I alone intend to be the one to see it. ~ Helen Frost

No man is his costume; it is only what he wears to the dance. ~ Heather K. O'Hara

My mind is heaven
My eyes are the sun and the moon
My awareness shines like the morning star. ~ Ilchi Lee

The robin brushes me at dusk.
Our good bones fail. We leave no mark.
His voice, she writes, was clear and quiet.
I hear him singing in the dark.

("Edward Thomas' Daughter") ~ Alison Brackenbury

You think aura is a veil
But there's nothing eat me and
wear me down like shame ~ Silenus Poetry

this chair

where i sit
and write my poems
is beat up and scratched,
held together with wire, tape and hope.

you figure it out. ~ John Yamrus

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! ~ Walt Whitman

It's not about putting forth the questions, it's about accepting the answers we ask for. ~ Shane Koyczan

To them, eternal life begins
And God Himself shall wipe away all tears. ~ Timothy Salter

Let go, let go, let go,
Just let it go,
Let the tears come out,
Stop fighting the tears back,
Stop wearing different masks,
Let yourself be seen,
Let yourself be the real you, ~ Julie Jewels Smoot

Some things are not always what they appear to be.
Your thoughts lead you as far as the eyes can see. ~ Laqueisha Malone

When the door of Perception is wide opened in a human mind,he sought all the way around Universal Truth,let him understand,'whom to expect' and 'whom to Help. ~ Nithin Purple

How can
someone
be
too young
to be
in love
when we were
crafted
from
ocean waves
& starlight?
-young love ~ Amanda Lovelace

The secret to life is to live as though you know the secret.
Barbara Botch ~ Barbara Botch

Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

Sonnet XII: There is a Meetinghouse across the wold

There is a Meetinghouse across the wold
Near shaded churchyard where pine breezes sigh;
Such sacred mem'ries gently here unfold
Of rustic folk whom 'neath the yew trees lie.
Engraved on stones now crum'ling in the earth,
Of souls asleep for o'er a hundred years,
Foretell unceasing cycles - Death and Birth
That yew tree nods and weeps her unseen tears.
But God shall guide us through the gloom of night
Victorious over grim reaper's blade,
As yet we grasp to see eternal light
Amidst life's fickle joys which here do fade.
Victims of Death by lusty scythe bannish'd
Triumphant wake to find nightmares vanish'd!

13 February, 2013 ~ Timothy Salter

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- Only wakes upon the sea.

Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada más; caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante, no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar. ~ Antonio Machado

history is what it is. it knows what it did. ~ Danez Smith

I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple--or a green field--a place to enter, and in which to feel. ~ Mary Oliver

Shall I be able to understand the sense of what you have written?

No, King, what a poet writes is not meant to have any sense.

What then?

To have the tune itself.

What do you mean? Is there no philosophy in it?

No, none at all, thank goodness.

What does it say, then?

King, it says "I exist." Don't you know the meaning of the first cry of the new-born child? The child, when it is born, hears at once the cries of the earth and water and sky, which surround him,--and they all cry to him, "We exist," and his tiny little heart responds, and cries out in its turn, "I exist." My poetry is like the cry of that new-born child. It is a response to the cry of the Universe. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

We judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intensions. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's no need for fiction when we have everyday life. ~ Latasha Wakefield

Every action is grace divine. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Live a life like a beautiful song, touch every heart with loving words and memorable music. ~ Debasish Mridha

Eternity, sacred time. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach. ~ Erica Jong

So everyone is in a hurry
These days that we worry
Right when we need to breath.
Excess of stress we catch,
That we forget to stretch
Causing pain for miles away,
Hence ruining a running day!! ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

I am not here [in the sanitarium] to write, but to be mad. ~ Robert Walser

I don't live vicariously through my characters, they live vicariously through me. ~ Angel M.B. Chadwick

Writers are the most pathetic souls when it comes to expressing their personal feelings. Their personalities are as complex as the characters they have weaved. And in a curious way, without them really knowing it, writers are the sum total of the characters they created in their heads or in their writings. Yes, My Dear Tania; writers are capable of reflecting their characters, even though most of them are determined to be just like your ordinary guy next door. ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

If I'd waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started "being creative," well, I'd still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it's in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are. ~ Austin Kleon

It takes bravery to recognize where in your life you are your own poison ... it takes courage to do something about it. ~ Steve Maraboli

Emmett Till's name still catches in my throat,
like syllables waylaid in a stutterer's mouth.
A fourteen-year-old stutterer, in the South
to visit relatives and to be taught
the family's ways. His mother had finally bought
that White Sox cap; she'd made him swear an oath
to be careful around white folks. She'd told him the truth
of many a Mississippi anecdote:
Some white folks have blind souls. In his suitcase
she'd packed dungarees, T-shirts, underwear,
and comic books. She'd given him a note
for the conductor, waved to his chubby face,
wondered if he'd remember to brush his hair.
Her only child. A body left to bloat. ~ Marilyn Nelson

Dear God, help us to be a living example of being Christ-centered. Purify the areas in our lives where we allowed the world and enemy to gain access. Please direct us into authentic truth so that all may see You in us. ~ Dana Arcuri

I offer you what I have my
Poverty ~ W.S. Merwin

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home. ~ Philip Levine

Full emergency power to the engines. Ram the Blade ship. ~ Katherine Applegate

You have to understand the purpose of life, the purpose of life is to do something which will live forever. ~ Yogi Bhajan

Problems are everywhere, so are Solutions. Unfortunately, we see more of the Problems than the Solutions.-RVM ~ R.v.m.

This book is dedicated to the much needed establishing of greater unity in the wider body of Christ. It is dedicated to agreement with the prayer that Jesus prayed:

"I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:"
John 17:20-22 NKJV ~ Andrew Billings

Your Father knows your gifts, your hindrances, and the condition you're in at every moment. And He also knows something you can't possibly know--every single person who's in desperate need of receiving His touch through you. ~ Bruce H. Wilkinson

Here's how I used to think
you made a book:
a poet comes along,
mouth half open, inspired,
then suddenly the idiot bursts into song -
fancy that! ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky

The Angles Of The Frame
1
Many years have passed since the day,
I looked into a mirror, saw a wrinkled face.
I've been disclosed to the bulging sands of my bed.

2
Aeons of breath account for the many veins in my atrium.

3
The bull I breast-fed for many years
And I've submerged into the frame.

4
I knew the justifications were hard,
Hard as against the current of water.
No news from the ambiguous points
something uncommon.
It can't be justified by natural rules,
many years we've been tangled on it.

5
This usurped land is a part of all buried treasure islands
No finger points in any direction.
Lost in the dead-end alleys
Tracing images without a compass.

6
Horse pounding pulse sing endlessly in my blood.
My kinsmen of horses…
Blood-line linked as to rays of a circle
like roots of a tree growing deep on the roof.

7
You can't stop the hands of the clock.
You can't come back to the broken minutes.
The days have been arranged one after another.
The knights have left the game one after another.

8
There was a straw mat where you fell asleep.
I became numb, quite used to the stillness of the house.

9
Was something supposed to get away from the core
to join us?
A century has passed and we still live in this house.


10
Dimensions hav ~ Rosa Jamali

Be friendly like a flower; smile to a stranger. ~ Debasish Mridha