"all other girls grow dull as painted flowers
or flutter harmlessly like coloured flies
whose wings are tangled in the net of leaves
spread by thin boughs that grow behind your eyes."

Intimacy by Edgell Rickword

"a woman feeling the fullness of her powers
at the precise moment when she must not use them
a woman sworn to lucidity
who sees through the mayhem, the smoky fires
of these underground streets
her dead poet learning to walk backward against the wind
on the wrong side of the mirror"

I Dream I’m the Death of Orpheus by Adrienne Rich

"

It is an equilibrium
that breasts the cresting seasons but still stays calm
and keeps warm. It deserves a good name.

Weathering. Patina, gloss, and whorl.
The trunk of the almost tree, gnarled but still fruitful.
Weathering is what I would like to do as well.

"

Weathering by Alastair Reid

"I am alone with the beating of my heart.

Stay with me tonight,
Old songs."

A Poet Thinks by Lui Chi

"When I am with you,
My heart is a frozen pond
Gleaming with agitated torches."

Opal by Amy Lowell

"Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art"

In My Craft or Sullen Art by Dylan Thomas

"The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,
Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,
You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,
You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping friends,
I am with you"

To One Shortly To Die by Walt Whitman

"your outlines, walk across your mouth
they put down footprints in your eyes.
This makes you real, peels back
your absence, lets your image heal"

This temporary face by Imtiax Dharker

"Your hair is my Carthage
And my arms the bow,
And our words arrows
To shoot the stars
Who from that misty sea
Swarm to destroy us."

Postlude by William Carlos Williams

"And as, when thunder broods afar
Imperial destinies of war
Men see the haze and heat, and feel
The sun’s rays like a shaft of steel.
Seeing no sun; even so the night
Clouds that deep miracle from sight:
Until this destiny be done
Hangs the corona on the sun;
And I absorbed in those unclean
Ghost-haunted veins of Messaline."

Messaline by Aleister Crowley

"It’s time for future memory image capture with some kind of mind camera
You need more life in your sleep"

Lady Grey Hair of Seattle Seduction and Pacific Pleasantry by Calvera Tomczak

"But sometimes, in the early hours,
we can feel what it must have been like
to be one of them, up on our toes,
stealing past doors where others are sleeping,
and suddenly able to see in the dark."

Walking on Tiptoe by Ted Kooser

"Love is a ditch in which the shallow drown."

Holy The Heart On Which We Hang Our Hope by Sebastian Barker

"This river speaks
Every boot had a body
Every shirt had a friend,
And the old boys
Say they shall all meet
Where every river ends."

City River Blues by Benjamin Zephaniah

"The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home."

The Old Dust by Li Bai