For more than a decade, I’ve maintained a list of quotes I like by poets, writers, and thinkers I find interesting. This post is part of that series. All posts in the series are organized alphabetically.

—

The future is light drifting like water, / light emptying itself on the white / beaches of the earth, / on the sidewalks of cities, / at roadsides where the dying watch their own ghosts / rising — Joyce Ellen Davis

My lovers know the blast of my chaotic giving; / they tremble at the whip of my supple thighs; / you cross me at your peril, I swallow light / when the warm of anger lashes me into a spin — Kwame Dawes

We who gave, owned nothing / learned the value of dirt, how / a man or woman can stand / among the unruly growth, / look far into its limits, / a place of stone and entanglements, / and suddenly understand / the meaning of a name, a deed — Kwame Dawes

‎I will make me beautiful if it takes / Uglying everything else — Nick Demske

We draw ponies. / Over and over again, to keep the fires of hell / At bay. Pretty ponies. — Nick Demske

My bedraggled / animal-body vetoes evolution, wants to crawl off / behind the couch and die like an old house-cat. — Risa Denenberg

I wanna end this prophylactic tour / Afraid that no-one around me / Understands my potato / Think I’m only a spud boy / Looking for a real tomato — DEVO

In my chest I am two-hearted always— / love and what love becomes / arrive when they want to, and hungry. — Natalie Diaz

Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head / Warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood / But then I was young. — Carol Ann Duffy