Quotes from Jeffrey McDaniel

I've had the wind knocked out of me, but never the hurricane

I want to whisper poetry into your mind and imprint love letters to your soul and dance with you in an empty white room of potential

I graduated first in my class from alibi school.

Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

I realise there's something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting things go.

I wish slitting the wrist of the clock would let this moment last forever – your tongue so deep in my ear it feels like a paintbrush, coating the dark, peeling walls inside my head with a carmine veneer.

on the scale of desire, your absence weighs more than someone else's presence

I mean, have you ever imagined the ocean is alive, and needs to tell us something important, and the only way it can talk is by making waves crash, and we just lounge there, drenched in cocoa butter, on towels with crappy novels and volleyballs, sipping spritzers, as the ocean uses all its strength to repeat the same warning over and over?

I mean, have you ever imagined the ocean is alive, and needs to tell us something important, and the only way it can talk is by making waves crash, and we just lounge there, drenched in cocoa butter, on towels with crappy novels and volleyballs, sipping spritzers, as the ocean uses all its strength to repeat the same warning over and over? (from the poem "The Berlin Mall")

During my formative years, my mother had this annoying habit of taking me into shoe stores and forgetting all about me.

I run through snow and turn around just to make sure I've got a past.

Once I thought I found love, but then I realized I was just out of cigarettes.

There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't.

I've been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silenceso far, without spilling a drop.

Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

I realise there's something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting things go.

There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't.

I want to rip off your logic and make passionate sense to you. I want to ride in the swing of your hips. My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks, blazing your limbs into parts of speech.

But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss. The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

Once I thought I found love, but then I realized I was just out of cigarettes.

I've had the wind knocked out of me, but never the hurricane

I know it's stupid to not own a gun yet have so many triggers, but in some other world gigantic seashells hold humans to their ears and listen to the echo of machines.

I swallowed a hand grenade that never stops exploding.

I know loving me isn't easy – the all-night helicopter parties, the glow-in-the-dark haircuts, but when I look at you it's like praying with my eyes. I know it's stupid to not own a gun yet have so many triggers, but in some other world gigantic seashells hold humans to their ears and listen to the echo of machines.