All one can do is: rise, ink a poem, paint a new world,
or compose a symphony that the gods will covet and soon kill you for. — J.C.W.
Who would have thought that candlelight withdrawal is a real thing? — J.C.W.
Poetry is the most eloquent survival technique. — J.C.W.
A Walk: feather-paced and feeling lighter–
it was effortless to leave my ‘ists’ and ‘isms’ at home. — J.C.W.
Poetry thrives like nothing else in the hush-hush gardens of winter. — J.C.W.
Poetry is a ghost that haunts itself. — J.C.W.
Nothing gives the heart a more keen appraisal than a new moon. Nothing. — J.C.W.
Rothko paints for me the abstract existentialist version of Yin / Yang. — J.C.W.
I’ve counted all her freckles (including the hidden ones), twice. — J.C.W
I’m going to write about flowers until my notebook is a garden. — J.C.W.
Part of me never wants to know about how you sustain this halo effect. — J.C.W
Youth is not “wasted on the young”,
as much as it is slowly unlearned by the aging. — J.C.W.
What does not kill you only makes you more of a Nietzschean — J.C.W.
I was just told that the universe has no key, that it’s atonal like heroin jazz. — J.C.W.
In the now-and-then, let’s be more now than then. — J.C.W
In a parallel universe, she adores me. — J.C.W.
The moon has been a prelude to many a psalm. — J.C.W.
It doesn’t bother me that the universe is expanding,
what bothers me is that it’s accelerating. — J.C.W.
What if Icarus was nocturnal? — J.C.W.
Rain is its own branch of philosophy. — J.C.W.
The chickens never came home to roost,
but the ghost most certainly have returned to haunt. — J.C.W.
When the thought of forever is too painful,
the sorrowful ones declare war on themselves. — J.C.W.
It’s the strumming of the universe, but in a “Dropped D” tuning. — J.C.W.
Want to prove you manhood?
Write a love poem as if you’re under oath. — J.C.W.
Time may heal all wounds—but it is still time. — J.C.W.
Questions:
Was I just kissed, or was I just enveloped by a blinding marigold sun?
Would it matter in this charged nowness if I knew the difference? — J.C.W.
Bellerophon, eyeing the untamed—this is how I approach each poem. — J.C.W.
If the ocean in its contemplative calm and in its ira tempest is not one epoch poem,
the pray tell what is? — J.C.W.
A mystic is a romantic that has fallen in love with their inner seeker. — J.C.W.
Come now, become the wind, and nothing else will perish. — J.C.W.
One of the most wondrous things about being a poet
is that there is a part of me that will always remain an eternal beginner. — J.C.W.
If you’ve found the balance in it, then the chances are it isn’t poetry. —J.C.W.
Aspiring to be is ample, one needs no after descriptor after “be”. — J.C.W.
Oh, I am songbird, but nature has shaped me for the low notes. — J.C.W.
I married music first, then the forest, and one day I’ll wed the sky. — J.C.W.
When midnight arrives,
all I want to pass beyond its plum-wilted lips is, I am sorry. — J.C.W.
I was able to sort away most of the fissured items of a troublesome year. — J.C.W.
The most wind-worn wings are coveted by grounded snakes. — J.C.W.
No matter how soft or torrential, the rain is always in a minor key. — J.C.W.
Comfort zones are overrated
and under long-term employ they’re soul-destroying. — J.C.W.
You don’t need an altar, you need a mirror. — J.C.W.
Write a line so alive that it blushes. — J.C.W.
At night, the stars count poets. — J.C.W.
Occam’s Razor, often cuts across the metaphysical currency of Pascal’s Wager. — J.C.W.
Put down the phone, and go answer your calling. — J.C.W.
When one writes poetry—the civilian heart suddenly becomes a soldier. — J.C.W.
Can’t we for once effectuate mass grace instead of mass graves? — J.C.W.
A library guides one into the belly of the beast—
and the hero, and the myth, and the… — J.C.W.
Even as a child, I never feared the dark.
I mean who would fear a punctual well-mannered companion? —J.C.W.
Is the degree cynicism directly proportional to the number candles upon the cake? —J.C.W.
Your childhood ends when you find out your imaginary friend has been gaslighting you. —J.C.W.
Poets unveil the guise of enigmatic delicate and harsh moments and then watch their true nature cling to the bone-white bosom of an understanding page. —J.C.W
If not a pocket, I hope to always find at least a locket full of compassion for the willful blindness of the romantic heart. —J.C.W.
The sun comes up, but the moon arrives. —J.C.W.
Post-midnight penning sessions—when I wish being vulnerable was a choice, and not one ill-defined compulsion after another. — J.C.W.
Thankfully, it was the midnight and not my Spanish guitar that was out of tune. —J.C.W.
After the taking in the fields of good omens,
the sad oak’s hard bend obliges a pause in the wandering. —J.C.W.
Surely there’s someone else out there who has overdosed on a dream. —J.C.W.
Poetry permits one to sail their vessel into the bleak and stark unknown without
being at the helm. —J.C.W.
What can I say…the must is better at hide-and-seek than me. —J.C.W.
I’ve often thought that effortless being occurs when the imagination
begins to observe the imaginer . —J.C.W.
As far as my poetry is concerned, today is the last day of summer. —J.C.W.
Dreams don’t have to be set in stone, just in motion. —J.C.W.
Somethings are so rare and nuanced,
that they cause the whole body to ache until the spine breaks out in song. —J.C.W.
Either Ol’ Johnny Boy here is caught in a torrential downpour on south 237,
or I am in the world’s longest car wash. —J.C.W.
…And then the divine broke out the pastels… —J.C.W.
I don’t mind that my species learns slowly, it is what it is for many reasons. What burdens me is my species often only learns the hard way. —J.C.W.
Where politics trespasses, poetry reveals manners —J.C.W.
Until we can harness the moonlight,
we’ll mind the wilderness and the leaves of poetry. —J.C.W.
I was born in a funeral parlor, when mother gave birth at a wake—
the dead showed me how to share and how to comb my hair
and how to turn sparrows to rain. —J.C.W.
The known universe in without; the observable universe is within. —J.C.W
Can’t, the snow is writing a poem upon fawn-colored the meadow. —J.C.W.
A crafty wino stole the vicar’s wine,
the communion bread is stale,
and transubstantiation isn’t the easiest word to spell. — J.C.W.
Life is not a box of chocolates; life is a box of Pandoras. —J.C.W.
Even in polite,
pedestrian conversation,
she’s always speak as if she’s on the high cliff of a jagged cry. —J.C.W.
Even winter grows in its bewilderment at
Death’s patience— she has but a few more unknown hours. — J.C.W.
Trust me,
I understand your inclination to cast away the skeleton key, and with simpler tool–
pick and jimmy the lock of reality. —J.C.W.
The whirlwind of much to do has been slowly translated into this prying silence,
I do believe music wants to hear from me again. — J.C.W.
Kentucky winter:
cheeks in full rosy bloom–
the wind’s a known hymn. —J.C.W.
What if we are all angels with severe amnesia? What then? —J.C.W.
In this cage called the human condition,
poetry serves as the windowpane we’ve carefully framed between the bars. —J.C.W.
It’s a strange feeling to go from plucking six quite agreeable strings,
to hammering away at eighty-eight unruly teeth. —J.C.W.
What is the shipping and handling cost of seven blankets of snow? —J.C.W.
A resolve as palpable as a hungry sparrow in an enduring winter. —J.C.W.
Tonight, I am equal parts stardust and wanderlust. —J.C.W.
Poetry occurs when a poor man’s broken voice finds a way to charm the gods. —J.C.W.
My mind is seldom in the gutter, my self-worth on the other hand. —J.C.W.
Lest we forget, we are the observable universe too. —J.C.W.
It’s dark enough to rise and shine and sing. — J.C.W.
We can’t forget, but we can temper ourselves to remember on our terms,
and thus grant one’s nerve to the keenest path to reprisal. — J.C.W.
If there’s not utility in madness—I am doomed. —J.C.W.
As the sirens of ritual sing,
may a random recalcitrant breath occasionally deafen you. —J.C.W.
All one-liners are copywritten by John Carroll Walls