Nais Kong Sabihin...

is Tagalog for 'I wish to say...'

[abigail-licad]

Ardent struggle, endless vigil, like all art.

Lorca, Federico Garcia. In Search of Duende “In Praise of Antonia Merce, La Argentina” New Direction Pearl edition, p. 73.

[abigail-licad]

How I did waste and exhaust my heart.

Carson, Anne. Plainwater, p. 165

[abigail-licad]

Surprises make a child of us: here is another.

Carson, Ann. Plainwater, p. 148.

[abigail-licad]

... I mean the more myself I  become the less intelligible I seem to others.

Fulton, Alice. “Wow Moment,” Barely Composed, p. 15

[abigail-licad]

I don't need a god to pray.

Fulton, Alice. “Wow Moment,” Barely Composed, p. 14.

[abigail-licad]

... Love is a gift  that springs from an unlit spot. Resin and rue. Even when I'm in the dark I'm in the dark with you.

Fulton, Alice. “Triptych for the Topological Heart,” Barely Composed, p. 9.

[abigail-licad]

Nearness without contact causes numbness. Analgesia.

Fulton, Alice. “Claustrophilia,” Barely Composed, p. 7

[abigail-licad]

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n out of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost, Book I, Lines 254-255. (New Edition edited by Merritt Y. Hughes)

[abigail-licad]

Ah there: you came with your indefinite charm. In history there are only a few  lines that can be found concerning you; and so I could fashion you more freely in my mind I fashioned you this way: beautiful and feeling.

Cavafy, C.D. “Caesarion” Collected Poems, p. 61

[abigail-licad]

... thinking comes down to this --  mystery, longing, thirst.

Seshadri, Vijay. “Heaven” 3 Sections, p. 15

[abigail-licad]

Just to look at it is to become it.

Seshadri, Vijay. “Hell.” 3 Sections, p. 12

[abigail-licad]

Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry. Knowing you are faithful would kill me with joy.

Seshadri, Vijay. “Three Urdu Poems,” 3 Sections, p. 16

[abigail-licad]

Stare at a word in a book long enough and that word slowly uncouples itself from what it means. The meaning backs away. The meaning is evicted from the structure of glyphs that it has rented. The meaning of the word is making dejected, wounded gestures with its hands as it retreats to the precipice of the incomprehensible, where it gives us a tender look, then turns and jumps.

Seshadri, Vijay; “Personal Essay,” 3 Sections, p. 64

[abigail-licad]

... that's the secret of enduring life; to face death, sickness, injustice, fear, and to say: It's a game, my heart, a game, don't be afraid.

Kazantzakis, Nikos

[abigail-licad]

There were fathoms in her, too, and sometimes he crossed them and landed and was not repulsed.

"He and She" by R.S. Thomas, p. 459

[abigail-licad]

Neither a person entirely broken nor one entirely whole can speak. In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.

Hirschfield, Jane,”In Praise of Coldness,” The Best of the Best American Poetry, p. 113

[abigail-licad]

[...] I -- doodad? -- convey my concern through poems, in which my fingers type softy about the importance of the Earth. They -- oligarchs? --  have painted their slogans green. I -- ineffectual left-leaning emotional black hole of a self-semaphore? -- recycle. Isn't a corporation technically a person and responsible? Aren't I technically a person and responsible? In a legal sense, in a regal sense, if romanticism holds sway? To give you a feel  for how soft his voice is, imagine a kitty that eats only felt wearing a sable coat on a bed of dandelion fluff under sheets of the foreskins  of seraphim, that's how soothingly they want to drill in Alaska, in your head, just in case. [...] [...] [...] since I'm wondering, what is the value of the wick or wire of the soul, be it emotional or notional, now that oceans are wheezing to a stop?

Hicok, Bob,”Having Intended to Merely Pick on an Oil Company, the Poem Goes Awry,” The Best of the Best American Poetry, p. 108