Prose Poetry Quotes

YEN
What happens if you take a cup? Put it to your lips. A cup of desire. Of dazzling colour. Of intoxicating aroma. You can't resist. Drink. And in the bottom of the cup. There is a fish. And the fish says "You have uncovered me! Now I am condemned. To die."
What happens if you find a box? 35mm by 35mm exactly. And are curious. You open it quickly. Of course. And inside there is an eye. And the eye seems to think that the box is its exclusive property. And fixes you with a terrifying glare.
What happens if you catch a soft sound? A voice whispering in the air. Above the tree tops. And you can't quite hear what it is saying. But you have to listen. So you float up. Then you find you can't come down again. When the conversation is finished. ~ Jay Woodman

I said
"I love you so much it's killing me"
and you kept saying sorry
so I stopped explaining
for it never made sense to you
what always did to me
to let what you love
kill you
and never regret.
As Romeo is dying Juliet says
"I am willing to die to remain by your side"
and love was never a static place of rest
but the last second of euphoria
while throwing yourself out from a 20 store window
to be able to say
"I flew before I hit the ground",
and it was glorious.
Don't be sorry.
The fall was beautiful, dear.
The crash was beautiful. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

The Grim Reaper isn't grim at all; he's a life-saver. He isn't grim because he isn't anything ... he is nothing. And nothing is a hell of a lot better than anything. So long, boys. ~ Jack Kerouac Atop An Underwood Early Stories And Other Writings

Prose poetry is not set to a melody or music so there's something freeing about it. ~ William Beckett

I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose. ~ Shelby Foote

It was quite a beautiful thing, the way we simply just came to be, with no effort or trying and slowly we found each other's hands in the dark. No chains or promises, just a simple sign of hope
that things will go on and get better
and that things and people and views are still out there, yet to be found. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Only those who will love longer than they expected to can truly love pecan pie, which doesn't explain its status as death rows most requested last dessert, or why chopped pecans, corn syrup, directions from the Karo bottle's cherry-red side are what mercy taste like to some. But there you have it. ~ Kate Lebo

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose. ~ J.K. Rowling

We danced with the devil with demons in our heart. ~ J. Limbu

Poetry must be as well written as prose. ~ Ezra Pound

hough we travel the whole over to find the perfect match,we must carry it with us a light or it's playing hard to catch. ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

Decades from now, my grandchild is going to be a poet... And she's going to write about how she's a living testament to how her grandmother made love to hurricane and calmed the storm. ~ Danabelle Gutierrez

The universe on your skin is empty
from all the silence on your tongue.
Forgive yourself. Let your body heal
from all the wounds you did not inflict
on yourself. Drop the sword you carry
on your shoulder for self-defense.
Lower the armor you hold high up
for protection. Those who harmed you
are not going to come back. Those who
have left never intended to return. ~ Akif Kichloo

I negate this distance with / what it would be / to be shining you. ~ Mikl Paul

...citizens of the U.S. live under an Empire of "evil doers" who have set themselves juxtaposed to humanity instilling in us from our youngest days how to slay our human element in exchange for an external existence of malnourished pride. ~ Steven Storm

She told me there was a place on my face she wanted to inhale. ~ Mikl Paul

He left the next morning, searching for a city with light that reminded him of me. He would mail me empty envelopes and boxes, I would take them into my closet, shut the door, and quickly open them. A flash of foreign light would fill the room, but only for a moment. I would whisper 'this is what we're like, this is what we're like.'… ~ Mikl Paul

Nowhere hidden has ever turned away a goodheart guest. ~ Mikl Paul

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee? ~ Ryan Goodrich

Poetry rhymes, a song our souls need to nourish upon. Poetry is a drum, a sound our bodies wish to have. Poetry is organized, a reading our eyes wish to view. Poetry is refined, a structure our moral selves seek. Poetry is civil, instigating the world to remain sane. Poetry is not ordinary, but it needs the ordinary eyes to continue to be the interesting art form of expression. Poetry is like a child communicating, who later grows to be an adult communicating in prose. ~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like the number one, or an 'I', or a shaft of light between almost closed curtains. There is an old letter called a thorn, which jags and tears at the throat as it's uttered. Later he learns that Grammar and Glamour share the same deeper root, which is further magic, and there can be neither magic without that root, nor plant. He's lost in it like Chid in Child, or God reversed into Dog. Somewhere inside him is a colon. A sentence can last for life. ~ Charles Lambert

Have trembled beneath the pressure of a light beam. ~ Jay Woodman

Around everything that is perfected, the unfinished ascends and intensifies. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

A little rain, a little blood. Black fingernails in August; and going berserk, going bananas. As if entrapped in a tropical heatwave, with dozens of whirlwinds swirling in one's mind, one thinks of a way out, or a way in: out of the scorching bosom of a volcano, and in – into the centre of a raging hurricane. And tracing the labyrinthine ways of your mind, the haphazard vagaries of your thoughts at ease, the odds and ends of your mental surplus you carelessly throw at the world, one wants to be at a loss, in a maze; amazed, and amazingly unabashed. ~ Adam Zagajewski

Feelings and emotion
ran through my veins
like a hurricane.
And that's when
everything
began to look like poetry.

- You look like poetry ~ Ka.ya

You big ugly. You too empty. You desert with your nothing nothing nothing. You scorched suntanned. Old too quickly. Acres of suburbs watching the telly. You bore me. Freckle silly children. You nothing much. With your big sea. Beach beach beach. I've seen enough already. You dumb dirty city with bar stools. You're ugly. You silly shopping town. You copy. You too far everywhere. You laugh at me. When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be friendly but you're not very friendly. You never ask me to your house. You insult me. You don't know how to be with me. Road road tree tree. I came from crowded and many. I came from rich. You have nothing to offer. You're poor and spread thin. You big. So what. I'm small. It's what's in. You silent on Sunday. Nobody on your streets. You dead at night. You go to sleep too early. You don't excite me. You scare me with your hopeless. Asleep when you walk. Too hot to think. You big awful. You don't match me. You burnt out. You too big sky. You make me a dot in the nowhere. You laugh with your big healthy. You want everyone to be the same. You're dumb. You do like anybody else. You engaged Doreen. You big cow. You average average. Cold day at school playing around at lunchtime. Running around for nothing. You never accept me. For your own. You always ask me where I'm from. You always ask me. You tell me I look strange. Different. You don't adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak. You think you're better than me. You don't like ~ Ania Walwicz

Always be a poet, even in prose. ~ Charles Baudelaire

What bizarre things does not one find in a great city when one knows how to walk about and how to look! Life swarms with innocent monsters. Oh Lord my God, Thou Creator, Thou Master, Thou who hast made law and liberty, Thou the Sovereign who dost allow, Thou the Judge who dost pardon, Thou who art full of Motives and of Causes, Thou who hast (it may be) placed within my soul the love of horror in order to turn my hear to Thee, like the cure which follows the knife; Oh Lord, have pity, have pity upon the mad men and women that we are! Oh Creator, is it possible that monsters should exist in the eyes of Him alone who knoweth why they exist, how they have made themselves, and how they would have made themselves, and could not? ~ Charles Baudelaire

I'm not
of this
world;
it pains me
deeply.
So, each night
just to survive,
I snip a piece of
mountain,
sea or sky
and fly. ~ Carolyn Riker

With the rain falling
surgically against the roof,
I ate a dish of ice cream
that looked like Kafka's hat.
It was a dish of ice cream
tasting like an operating table
with the patient staring
up at the ceiling. ~ Richard Brautigan

Embrace your inner goddess, never let go of the light you carry within. ~ Cynthia Dougherty-Bernal

He said that he felt that there was a book hidden between us. Some small thing lodged between a rib or a summer. and He wanted to find it. ~ Mikl Paul

Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers. ~ Charles Baudelaire

you


you're a beast, she said
your big white belly
and those hairy feet.
you never cut your nails
and you have fat hands
paws like a cat
your bright red nose
and the biggest balls
I've ever seen.
you shoot sperm like a
whale shoots water out of the
hole in its back.

beast beast beast,
she kissed me,
what do you want for
breakfast? ~ Charles Bukowski

Bad bananas are like push-up bras
a promise of tenderness can deliver tasteless mush, and we're not supposed to complain. ~ Kate Lebo

Later when they would mention, they would say, and everyone would know, but not nearly as well as they meant. ~ Mikl Paul

I am constantly torn between the will to be seen and still hidden so god damn well,
a contradiction I never figured out. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

The difference between superlative pie and a wish for cake is crust. Understand that pie is a generous but self-centered substance. It likes attention, not affection. Do not hug your crust. Do not rub its back or five its high. Don't fuss with refrigerators every step oft he way. Keep the water and butter cold, and remember what a wise baker once said: The goal is pie. ~ Kate Lebo

So you will meet many 'someones' who will give a new definition to your name.
And you can not build walls, must not close the door and please don't hide,
because if you ask me about hurt
and love
I will say love. Love because the hurt will come and go no matter what, but only love makes it worth while. Only love can cure it.
Don't be scared. Go. Love. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Poetry is prose in slow motion. ~ Nicholson Baker

I used to be fine in my loneliness
but something
or someone
snapped me out of it
and showed me company. What it's like to feel at home,
and so the going on by myself part wasn't as easy anymore.
Seasons happened and things got colder and harder and suddenly I found myself smoking circles in the air
by myself in the snow
and I was not okay. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Piece by piece, as at the strokes of a dull godmother's wand, the old world sprang back into position. ~ Sylvia Plath

I'll give you one chance to run,
but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear…

"It's best to watch out for men, like me. ~ Ryan Goodrich

Poetry is its own medium; it's very different than writing prose. Poetry can talk in an imagistic sense, it has particular ways of catching an environment. ~ Story Musgrave

He left her a note in her right slipper that said when I was alone yesterday I was happy, and I wanted you to know. Because look at how much you've done in me. ~ Mikl Paul

Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed
the blueprint to a life
It is a presence
it has a history a form
Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence ~ Adrienne Rich

Some People

Some people flee some other people.
In some country under a sun
and some clouds.

They abandon something close to all they've got,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now preens.

Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles.
The emptier they get, the heavier they grow.

What happens quietly: someone's dropping from exhaustion.
What happens loudly: someone's bread is ripped away,
someone tries to shake a limp child back to life.

Always another wrong road ahead of them,
always another wrong bridge
across an oddly reddish river.
Around them, some gunshots, now nearer, now farther away,
above them a plane seems to circle.

Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or, better yet, some nonexistence
for a shorter or a longer while.

Something else will happen, only where and what.
Someone will come at them, only when and who,
in how many shapes, with what intentions.
If he has a choice,
maybe he won't be the enemy
and will leave them to some sort of life. ~ Wisława Szymborska

Take this neat little equation here. It tells me all the ways an electron can make itself comfortable in or around an atom. That's the logic of it. The poetry of it is that the equation tells me how shiny gold is, how come rocks are hard, what makes grass green, and why you can't see the wind. And a million other things besides, about the way nature works. ~ Richard Feynman

I call my style, "Poetry in Motion." So I'm working on a new art to make fighting even more beautiful. ~ Bobby Green

No one ever expects poetry to sell. ~ Alan Lightman

I know that some night
in some bedroom
soon
my fingers will
rift
through
soft clean
hair

songs such as no radio
plays

all sadness, grinning
into flow. ~ Charles Bukowski

with his words
in my head
I slept for thirty
or forty forevers
while the grass shrieked
and the trees tremored
it was crazy
letting my youth
pass like that
giving myself up
to the abstract fears
balconies collapsing
over the east river
as far as the eye could see
until all is miniature
wind over water
without end
when I am dead
I will have something
to say about death
& all the men stretched out
a girl must be a graveyard
I am a descendant of fields
and want to keep my mind off it, especially ~ Deborah Landau

Men do not trip over mountains: They fall over earth mounds. ~ Pierre Stephen Robert Payne

Would you like some warm Spring pie?
Then, take a cup of clear blue sky.
Stir in buzzes from a bee,
Add the laughter of a tree.

A dash of sunlight should suffice
To give the dew a hint of spice.
Mix with berries, plump and sweet.
Top with fluffy clouds, and eat! ~ Paul F. Kortepeter

Photography's potential as a great image-maker and communicator is really no different from the same potential in the best poetry where familiar, everyday words, placed within a special context, can soar above the intellect and touch subtle reality in a unique way. ~ Paul Caponigro

All beautiful distractions, ignites from you. ~ V.S. Atbay

Poetry for me is very easy. It's like a lightning bolt. I feel this calling, and the first line of the poem comes into my head, and I just have to go to the page, to the typewriter, to the computer or whatever and write it. ~ Gioconda Belli

I've seen plays that are, objectively, total messes that move me in ways that their tidier brethren do not. That's the romantic mystery of great theater. Translating this ineffability into printable prose is a challenge that can never be fully met. ~ Ben Brantley

Through and through the inspired leaves,
Ye maggots, make your windings;
But, oh! respect his lordship's taste,
And spare his golden bindings. ~ Robert Burns

Look at
how deeply flawed
we are

and yet
capable of loving
so perfectly. ~ Sanober Khan

My dad is a Jack Nicholson lookalike and a frustrated performer, my mother's into reading and poetry. I suppose the thing I owe them most is my confidence. ~ Michael Sheen

I seem to be hunting for something of myself out there - something in myself that will give me a symbol for all this - a symbol for the sense of life I get out here - ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

I am a city of sounds.
I will keep you safe.
I know I am supposed to feel ugly.
They all tell me that no woman
should look so well-traveled,
but they do not know.
I am earth. I am sun and skies.
I am the high road, the low road.
I am every poem about skin.
I am a world that cannot be explored in one day.
I am not a place for cowards. ~ Caitlyn Siehl

what if I fall? oh, my darling, but if you fly? ~ Erin Hanson

Scent of old books a mystery; a secret port of the dreamers. ~ China Cancio

Much of poetry in the making is the fiddle with a few items. You lay a word against another and wait. You try another word. And another. Yet another. You wait. You begin again. Listening. Looking. For the elusive inevitable thing which has to arrive before it is recognised. And, like Odysseus, may not be recognised at first. ~ Craig Raine

I fell in love with the young assistant professor who took me through my first poetry course. Really in love--that is, enough to alarm Mother. Although naturally I never breathed my feelings to a soul--although naturally the first time she suggested that I might invite him home for tea I went to my room and shook for forty minutes. So she may have noticed something. In any case, in order to patrol the situation, she enrolled in his courses. And, as we bore the same name, she was seated beside me where not the flickering of an eyelash escaped her attention. I never have heard of this happening to anyone else in the history of education. ~ Agnes De Mille

Life is too short to be mad for too long. ~ Judith L. Harper

He who creates a poison, also has the cure.
He who creates a virus, also has the antidote.
He who creates chaos, also has the ability to create peace.
He who sparks hate, also has the ability to transform it to love.
He who creates misery, also has the ability to destroy it with kindness.
He who creates sadness, also has the ability to to convert it to happiness.
He who creates darkness, can also be awakened to produce illumination.
He who spreads fear, can also be shaken to spread comfort.
Any problems created by the left hand of man,
Can also be solved with the right,
For he who manifests anything,
Also has the ability to
Destroy it.


IN THE HANDS OF MAN by Suzy Kassem ~ Suzy Kassem

Thanks to Karen Connelly who read earlier versions of this manuscript and to Ronald Hatch my editor and publisher. ~ Nancy Holmes

When I started to take literature and poetry classes, I just started to get inspired by these new incredible works of art that I had never seen or heard of before. I wrote a lot of bad high-school poetry, just like pretty much everyone did, I think, at some point. For me, the inspiration never really stopped. ~ M. Ward

If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come: so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune's might;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compar'd with loss of thee will not seem so. ~ William Shakespeare

Sing your life; any fool can think of words that rhyme. ~ Morrissey

How - I didn't know any
word for it - how "unlikely" ...
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't? ~ Elizabeth Bishop

I know you and I were lovers since 1000000000000 years ~ Avijeet Das

Poetry is a mock of a cry at finding a million dollars and a mock of a laugh at losing it. ~ Carl Sandburg

even
in the loneliest moments

i have been there
for myself. ~ Sanober Khan