So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.

I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ....... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. ~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke

(I measure time by how a body sways.)

I came to love, I came into my own.

The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back; Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.