they thought I was like them

I am going to outlive myself. 

Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. 

Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, 

like a puddle of water, 

like the red bench in the streetcar.

Peter Quinn


Morris Graves

In youth we were whole and the terror and pain of the world 
penetrated us through and through. There was no sharp separation 
between joy and sorrow: they fused into one, as our walking 
life fuses with dream and sleep. We rose one being in the morning 
and at night we went down into an ocean, drowned out completely, 
clutching the stars and the fever of the day. 


Kuzma Petrov Vodkin - 'Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, poetess'




Emilie Charmy

These dark orthogonals and parallel curves

This swift recession to the single

Disgusted, the poem closes its mouth

Full of revulsion, the poem proceeds to close its eyes and ears

Once it recognizes, it realizes

Escape is impossible

Kate Zambrano

I swear to surrender this moment all claim to the ranks of the sensible.

I let go my pride of learning and judgment of right and of wrong.

I’ll shatter the vessel of memory, scattering the last drop of tears;

With the foam of the ruby red wine, I’ll bathe and brighten my laughter.

Dean McDowell


Ken Currie 


Johan Olof Gudmund Sager-Nelson



'I could have said a lot of things'


Monica Bonzano 


Gloria Cesal

Mel McCuddin

 

Meredith Frampton


Fanny Nushka Moreaux


David Campbell


Sun Hongbin, 'Fat Lady'


Jan Mankes


Jessie Boswell


Alan Post 

Stay, coward blood, and do not yield to beauty's burning field

(I did not write this and neither did you)

And this latest example to arrive

The end is never near because it has always

Unknown


Dinh Quan


Marie Godest 



1. line - Jean-Paul Sartre
2. quote - Henry Miller 
4. - excerpt from a poem by Rabindranath Tagore 

    3. & 5. - excerpts from a poem of John Yau