Poem a Day

Be happy!
Let all the number of the stars give light to thy fair way!

-William Shakespeare

By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more.

-Lord Byron

Your silence will not protect you.

-Audre Lorde

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it’s you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

-Pablo Neruda

The Alchemist

I burned my life, that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I had found unmysterious flesh ––
Not the mind’s avid substance –– still
Passionate beyond the will.

-Louise Bogan

Words are the voice of the heart.

-Confucius

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

-Vincent Van Gogh

Not all who wander are lost.

-J.R.R. Tolkien

And give me silence, give me water, hope.
Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.
Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.
Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.
Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

-Pablo Neruda

Hug O’ War

I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

-Shel Silverstein