without really knowing me

I told Magdalena everything.
I had to. Watching her love me without really knowing me was like watching her love someone else, and the jealousy was killing me.

Beat The Reaper
Josh Bazell

you make it hard on yourself

Everything comes out the same, no matter whether you make it hard on yourself or not.

Taxi Driver Wisdom

"It is futile," I said

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never —”
“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on.

I saw a man pursuing the horizon
Stephen Crane

with unexpected significance

She lived right around the corner, so we didn't have to walk far... As it was, the walk lasted maybe a minute. Even so, I remember feeling like Wordsworth on the verge of a sublime experience, one of his "spots of time." I was alert and deeply connected to my surroundings, the familiar world seemed to vibrate with unexpected significance. The revelation it brought me wasn't grand or romantic, though - it was just a simple sense of belonging. I'm here, I thought. I'm happy.

Joe College
Tom Perrota

Brave New Voices

What happens when all you know is pain?

Jasmine Bailey, 18

Mock Orange

It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.

Mock Orange [excerpt]
Louise Glück

Madmen... they are the real artists

They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.

Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and hammers
in the quiet museums of Prague and Amsterdam.

Actually, they are the real artists,
you said, spinning the ice in your glass.
The screwdriver is their brush.
The real vandals are the restorers,
you went on, slowly turning me upside-down,
the ones in the white doctor's smocks
who close the wound in the landscape,
and thus ruin the true art of the mad.

I watched my poem fly down to the front
of the bar and hover there
until the next customer walked in--
then I watched it fly out the open door into the night
and sail away, I could only imagine,
over the dark tenements of the city.

All I had wished to say
was that art was also short,
as a razor can teach with a slash or two,
that it only seems long compared to life,
but that night, I drove home alone
with nothing swinging in the cage of my heart
except the faint hope that I might
catch a glimpse of the thing
in the fan of my headlights,
maybe perched on a road sign or a street lamp,
poor unwritten bird, its wings folded,
staring down at me with tiny illuminated eyes.

Madmen
Billy Collins

your hand in my hand

The book I've been reading
rests on my knee. You sleep.

It's beautiful out there -
fields, little lake and winter trees
in February sunlight,
every car park a shining mosaic.

Long, radiant minutes,
your hand in my hand,
still warm, still warm.

On a Train
Wendy Cope

We are one.

Whenever I say "I" I mean also, "you." And so, together, as one, we shall begin.

Introduction to Spring and All 1923 [excerpt]
William Carlos Williams

a theme that keeps coming up

You are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you is a theme that keeps coming up in songs and poems. There seems to be no room for variation. I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful and you are a fool to be in love with me, even though this notion has surely crossed the minds of women and men alike. You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool is another one you don't hear. Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful. That one you will never hear, guaranteed...

Night Club [excerpt]

Billy Collins

The Fall

There was a man who found two leaves and came
indoors holding them out saying to his parents
that he was a tree.

To which they said then go into the yard and do
not grow in the living room as your roots may
ruin the carpet.

He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he
dropped his leaves.

But his parents said look it is fall.

The Fall
Russell Edson

For A.K. and Treckles.

...and so the lion fell in love with the lamb.

Twilight
Stephanie Meyer

Graves

I love you and your great way of forgetting.

Graves [excerpt]
Carl Sandburg

so much depends

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens


The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

End of Winter

When has my grief ever gotten in the way of your pleasure?

End of Winter [excerpt]
Louise Glück

my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved,

Good morning, on July 7
Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V[ienna] is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once - Be calm, only by a clam consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
ever thine
ever mine
ever ours

"Immortal Beloved" Letter
July 7, 1812
Ludwig Van Beethoven

To be loved means

To be loved means to be consumed in flames. To love is to give light with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away; to love is to endure.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge [excerpt]

Rainer Maria Rilke

one problem

Too much together, or too much apart:
This is one problem of the human heart.

Thirty-five years of sharing day by day
With so much shared there is no need to say

So many things: we know instinctively
The common words of our proximity.

Not here, you're missed; now here I need to get away,
To make some portion separate in the day...

Together, Apart [excerpt]
Anthony Thwaite

And because it is my heart

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter — bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

In the Desert
Stephen Crane

-where -You -are

A-
round
my neck
an amu-
let
Be-
tween
my eyes
a star
A
ring
in my
nose
and a
gold
chain
to
Keep me
where
You
are

A-
Samuel Menashe

For A.K.

98 F. Supp 203

Besides,

if I got rid of my demons, I'd lose my angels.

Conversations With Tennessee Williams [excerpt]
Tennessee Williams & Albert J. Devlin