Andrew McMillan Quotes & Sayings

love
is giving everything too easily
then staying to try and claw it back — Andrew McMillan

Being one's true and honest self can often be dangerous; and poetry should always be a place where, if only between the pages, that danger and energy and fear and excitement and love can fizz and spark without ever threatening to burn something down. — Andrew McMillan

he looks the way
silence looks before it's broken — Andrew McMillan

Finally

a day will come when
woken by the xylophone
of sunthroughblinds
you'll realise

that the beach was not the place
where horses tore the sand
to ribbon

that the scent of him has lifted
from the last of the sheets
that he isn't coming back

that it hasn't rained
but the birds are pretending that it has
so they can sing — Andrew McMillan

they say we're losing centimetres
every year; as if we were
a beach that's losing
ground with every salt advance

the night is overcast
but why not try, at least,
to touch the things our orbits
cannot hold, while there's time
while we can. — Andrew McMillan

the toilet is an intimacy
only shared with parents when you are young
and once again when they are older
and with lovers when say on a Sunday
morning stretching into the bathroom
you wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and go to hug the naked body
stood with its back to you and kiss the neck
and taste the whole of the night on there
and smell the morning's pale yellow loss
and take the whole of him in your hand
and feel the water moving through him
and knowing that this is love the prone flesh
what we expel from the body and what we let inside — Andrew McMillan

oh love, doesn't the fact that the world is so big,
laid out like ripe fruit
make you want to stay? — Andrew McMillan

please, love, leave,
like leaf from tree;
taking beauty,
leaving seed — Andrew McMillan