Ode To Drowning Quotes

Ode to Drowing"

If rain signals
the lover's return
then I am lost

in the desert
burning
like the brain fever bird

looking for images of you
through mesquite
and teak

Because there's no sign
of you
or what I know

to be as you
only clouds adrift
in a vanquished sky

like vines
of throbbing arms
and mouths

drinking at the shore
intoxicated
with the night ~ Tishani Doshi

I got used to birds: small black birds flying up from behind a building like God had tossed up a handful of currants, birds squalling in the parking lot of the grocery store (drowning the hum of industrial refrigerators), chachalacas -brown robed nuns to the spangled disco dancer peacocks - cackling in the dust of our yard. I got used to the chatters, squeaks, squalls, peeps, calls that sounded like bitter laughter, whistles, flutes, calls that sounded like souls ascending to heaven. I got used to dust and flatness, to sunsets like pink water pouring from the sky, flooding the earth with orange soda. I got used to wind: the hot, cruel wind of afternoon, the merciful magnolia breeze of night. I got used to it. But then I had to go. ~ Kathleen Founds

And so she comes to dream herself the tree, The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins, Holding her to the sky and its quick blue, Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight. She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet. ~ Hart Crane

L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning. ~ Dennis Lehane

This Marriage - Ode 2667

May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk,
this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade
like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
our every day a day in paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
a seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
an omen as welcome
as the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe
how spirit mingles in this marriage ~ Kabir Helminski

You wouldn't think the touch of someone's hand could blow your mind. It's nothing, right? People don't right songs and poems about holding hands - they write them about kisses and sex and eternal love. I mean, when you're a little kid you hold hands with your parents to cross the street. Who's going to write an ode to that?
We were alone in the dark, even though the enormous theater was filled with probably a thousand people. We were a tiny island in a sea of other people who didn't matter, who had no meaning, who were so stupid, so oblivious, so stuck in their own boring lives that they didn't even notice the huge, momentous, life-shattering event that was taking place right there in row L, between seats 102 and 104.
Derek Edwards was holding my hand. ~ Claire LaZebnik

Little do you know
How I'm breaking while you fall asleep
Little do you know
I'm still haunted by the memories
Little do you know
I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece

Little do you know
I need a little more time

Underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside
I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind
I'm ready to forgive you but forgetting is a harder fight

Little do you know
I need a little more time
I'll wait, I'll wait
I love you like you've never felt the pain,
I'll wait
I promise you don't have to be afraid,
I'll wait
The love is here and here to stay
So lay your head on me

Little do you know
I know you're hurting while I'm sound asleep
Little do you know
All my mistakes are slowly drowning me
Little do you know
I'm trying to make it better piece by piece

Little do you know
I, I love you 'til the sun dies

Oh wait, just wait
I love you like I've never felt the pain,
Just wait
I love you like I've never been afraid,
Just wait
Our love is here and here to stay
So lay your head on me

I'll wait (I'll wait), I'll wait (I'll wait)
I love you like you've never felt the pain,
I'll wait (I'll wait)
I promise you don't have to be afraid,
I'll wait
The love is here and here to stay
So lay your head on ~ Alex&Sierra

What do you do when you're drowning but the only way to be free is to hold on to the one thing in all the world you're afraid won't be able to keep both os you afloat? ~ Rachel Van Dyken

All I have is a scratch," I explain. "One little, tiny …" I break down again. Because it's not just a little tiny scratch, and I now that. The softest parts of my skin are under a stranger's dirty fingernails, my DNA embedded there along with fast-food grease and his own dandruff. Some of my cells are with him right now and I don't want them to be. I want them back. I want them all right where they belong and I can't even imagine if it were the other way around, if I'd woken up with a miasma of them deep inside of me, and the thought sends me retching again, the sound almost drowning out the buzzing of my phone. ~ Mindy McGinnis

His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life. ~ Peter Ackroyd

The drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable - except when you see it happen in the drawing room. ~ Frank Herbert

Closing my eyes, I then focused in on the lyrics. I couldn't help thinking how much the song meant to me because of Maddie. She had caught me when I'd fallen and saved me from the epic storm of grief just like the lyrics said. I wasn't drowning in sadness anymore. Instead I was drowning in her-her smile, her beauty, her giving heart and beautiful spirit. ~ Katie Ashley

Poet's Ode to his Wastepaper Basket
I love the way you sit in the corner,
patient and gracious like a lover,
ready to catch my every crumpled vanity. ~ Beryl Dov

Anytime I hear about another one of us gone berserk, shooting up his ex's office or drowning her kids to free herself up for her Internet boyfriend, the question I always ask is not, like every other tongue-clucking pundit in the country, how could this have happened? but why doesn't this happen every day? ~ Tim Kreider

The truth is that we're drowning in busywork, nonproductive work, everything from "creative" banking and insurance bureaucracies to the pointless shuffling of data and the manufacturing of products designed to be obsolescent almost immediately- and I would argue that a great deal of what we're doing should just stop. Interestingly, people of all sorts are beginning to reconnect to skills and sensibilities that were bulldozed in the frenzy of 'development' that remade our world during the past two generations. Those orchards and fields that once covered the peninsula, the East Bay, and Silicon Valley are haunting us now, as we seek to relocalize our food sources and our economy more generally. People are relearning how to reuse things, how to fix broken items, and even how to make new things from the scraps of industrial waste. The world shaped by capitalist modernization is not good for human life and is certainly rough on the health of the planet. The hollowing out of communities whose lives were once anchored in the old Produce Market area or who shared life along the vibrant Fillmore blues corridor is precisely what people are trying to overcome. ~ Rebecca Solnit

[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off. ~ Judith Viorst

Republicans are people who, if you were drowning 50 feet from shore, would throw you a 25-foot rope and tell you to swim the other 25 feet because it would be good for your character. Democrats would throw you a hundred-foot rope and then walk away looking for other good deeds to do. ~ S.I. Hayakawa

Naomi makes a face and points to the potted flowers near the front door of her houseboat. "Just look at that," she says, as if something upsetting has happened.
She reaches into one of the pots and pulls out a green vine, a few feet long, with several bell-shaped flowers. "There," she says with a vindicated look in her eye, as if this vine has wronged her in some way.
"What is it?" I ask.
She flashes a patronizing smile. "An invasive weed," she says, tossing the vine into the lake. I watch the little white flowers flutter in the water. I want to kneel down and rescue them from drowning. "Morning glory," Naomi continues, shaking her head. "It'll take over if you let it."
I watch as the vine drifts away on the lake. The little flowers bob up and down as if gasping for air. I consider that the vine might find its way to shore and wash up on a patch of soil, where it will start a new existence, maybe sink its roots and thrive. Maybe Naomi has set it free.
I think of the bluebells that grew in my mother's garden when I was a child. Weeds, really. But I'd pick them by the handful, and when bunched together they looked stunning. ~ Sarah Jio

It's our turf," the younger woman barked.
"Actually it's my turf."
The thugs spun to me.
"Let's see . . . You're hassling people in my territory, so you owe me a fee. A couple of fingers ought to do it. Do we have a volunteer?"
The small thug pulled a bowie knife from a sheath on his waist.
I kept coming. "That's a mistake."
The thug crouched down. He clenched his knife, like he was drowning and it was a straw that would pull him out. A little crazy light danced in his eyes. "Come on, whore. Come on."
The oldest bluff in the book: get a crazy glimmer in your eyes, look like you're ready to fight, and the other guy might back off. Heh.
"That might work better for you if you held the knife properly. You were doing okay until you pulled the blade. Now I know that you have no clue how to use it and I'll have to chop your hand off and shove that knife up your ass just to teach you a lesson. Nothing personal. I have a reputation to uphold."
I pulled Slayer out. I had years of practice to back me up and I made the draw fast.
The two bravos behind the knife-wielding thug backed away.
I looked at Slayer's blade. "Well, check this out. Mine is bigger. Let's go, knife-master. I don't have all day. ~ Ilona Andrews

I am the love.
I am drowning in your love.
I am drunk with your love.
I am a dumb for your love.
I am crazy about your love.
I dream at night about love.
I know that you're my love,
but I forgot how to love
because I become the love. ~ Debasish Mridha

I have yet to be completely submerged in reality, for drowning in the sky. ~ Kellie Elmore

When we go to tell our stories, people think we want it to have gone different. People want to say things like "sore losers" and "move on already," "quit playing the blame game." But is it a game? Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they're winning when they say "Get over it." This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that's how you know you're on board the ship that serves hors d'oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who've never even heard of the words hors d'oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, "It's too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings." And then someone else on board says something like, "But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d'oeuvres." At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who'd been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the fat ~ Tommy Orange

Is there a phone I can use? (Talon)
In the kitchen. (Sunshine)
Could you please bring it to me? (Talon)
It's not cordless. I always lose those things or I drop them someplace and break them. The last one I had ended up drowning in the toilet. (Sunshine) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder ~ James Joyce

I'll hold you 'til the end of time, if that's all you want from me. But there's so much more I could do for you. I would treasure you. I would-" He broke off, leaning so close she felt as if she were drowning in the tropical azure and ocean green of his eyes. "Marry me, Cassandra- and we'll tell them all to go to hell. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Comics play a trite but lusty tune on the C natural keys of human nature. They rouse the most primitive, but also the most powerful, reverberations in the noisy cranial sound-box of consciousness, drowning out more subtle symphonies. Comics scorn finesse, thereby incurring the wrath of linguistic adepts. They defy the limits of accepted fact and convention, thus amortizing to apoplexy the ossified arteries of routine thought. ~ William Moulton Marston

How beautiful it is to be human.
That we can fall asleep
drowning
in tears
and pain
but wake to a new sunrise
on a new day
with a dry face. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

Until we accept that our children have much more of a risk of being sexually abused than drowning in a pool, being struck by a car, stricken with cancer, hurt by a vaccination, or diagnosed with ebola, we contribute to a culture of panic and ignorance. ~ Ann Brasco

The world stops spinning. She is the ocean crashing into me, tossing me, drowning me. I can't breathe. I do not care. I want to die right now. I want nothing more than to drown in her. My head is filled with a gray fog. I am being pulled toward heaven and my angel is kissing me.

Heidi Acosta. Barbie Girl (Kindle Locations 3330-3332). ~ Heidi Acosta

The expression "following suit" is a curious one, because it has nothing to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river, for instance, and you jumped in right after them, you would be following suit. You can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first. ~ Lemony Snicket

I remember Liz, her face white, delicate as an ash on the wind; her red lips staining the cigarette; her full breasts under the taut black jersey. She said to me, "But think how happy you can make a man someday." Yes, I'm thinking, and so far it's all right. But then I do a flipover and reach out in my mind to E., seeing a baseball game, maybe, perhaps watching television, or roaring with careless laughter at some dirty joke with the boys, beer cans lying about green and shiny gold, and ash trays. I spiral back to me, sitting here, swimming, drowning, sick with longing. I have too much conscience injected in me to break customs without disasterous effects; I can only lean enviously against the boundary and hate, hate, hate the boys who can dispel sexual hunger freely, without misgiving, and be whole, while I drag out from date to date in soggy desire, always unfulfilled. The whole thing sickens me. ~ Sylvia Plath

People have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love - the deepest kind of love. . . . It's a shame that people all over the world can't have that kind of love in their hearts. . . . There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have - a wonderful world. - Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows ~ Rebecca Frankel

The kiss wasn't just any kiss. No, it was a tricky little bastard, because it started out soft and gentle, but shifted gears in a matter of seconds. The moment her response went from surprise to surrender, the kiss turned hard and hungry, launching us into a frenzy of movement. Her arms were around my neck, my hands were moving all over her body, and somehow, in a span of about five seconds, she climbed up me like a tree, her legs wrapped tightly around my waist.
We spun and bumped into the counter. I reached behind my back with one hand to tighten the cross of her ankles. And then I had her sitting on the edge of the stovetop, my hands exploring the tops of her thighs. I pushed the ruffled skirt hem up and clasped on to her bare, silky skin. Her tongue dove to the back of my throat, sliding over mine like wet, slick velvet.
Holy mother fuck, I couldn't breathe. I was drowning in this girl. ~ Rachael Wade

It was horrible and senseless, and I now felt the sudden need to drink scotch, brood, and read Edgar Allen Poe or the ending to Hamlet. Maybe I would top it all off with some YouTube videos of drowning kittens while listening to Radiohead. ~ Penny Reid

Sure, QuizBowl wasn't a cool activity to join and, yeah, the idea of answering difficult questions in front of an audience terrified me. But it wasn't anything like the fear that accompanied my drowning nightmare - harrowing and visceral. No, this fear made me feel fizzy. Hopeful.
In fact, this fear felt like waking up do discover I am still here. ~ Emery Lord

Laurence," Granby said at his shoulder, "in the hurry, the ammunition was all laid in its usual place on the left, though we are not carrying the bombs to balance it out; we ought to restow."
"Can you have it done before we engage? Oh, good Lord," Laurence said, realizing. "I do not even know the position of the convoy; do you?" Granby shook his head, embarrassed, and Laurence swallowed his pride and shouted, "Berkley, where are we going?"
A general explosion of mirth ran among the men on Maximus's back. Berkley called back, "Straight to Hell, ha ha!" More laughter, nearly drowning out the coordinates that he bellowed over. ~ Naomi Novik

Ode to Psyche - Excerpt

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: ~ John Keats

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make dspair pause. For in truth, we who are creatures of impulse, are creatures of despair. ~ Joseph Conrad

While Otto ran here and there, carefully choosing places to urinate, I felt over every inch of my body the scratches of sexual abandonment, the danger of drowning in scorn for myself and nostalgia for him. I got up and went back along the path; I whistled again, and waited for Otto to return. ~ Elena Ferrante