Alex Dimitrov > Quotes

“This is a Personal Poem

My self's self is thinking about itself.
Trying to sell its self a new self.

Don't worry, reader,
I'm not trying to fool you with language,

I have eyes to do that with.
I have forgotten our history,

I have forgotten how we met.
Reader, are you upset at how fast we're moving?

I'm likely with you in your bed,
between your hands, somewhere

in your mouth before
whatever it is you'll say next.

Say yes and now and love too.
Say what did Judith Butler say when saying,

" … one is undone, in the face of the other,
by the touch, by the scent, by the feel,

by the prospect of the touch,
by the memory of the feel."

I want to know you, reader.
I want to know a lot of things.

Can we ever truly forget about ourselves?
Is every self a self that makes itself available to love?

Like death. And its kind availability.
Like language, reader,

would we still be so unhappy if we could escape it?
To name the namelessness that is love,

in what we read, and what we see,
and what are feelings really?

Facts or flaws,
or something tells me now

that I must leave you, reader.
It's not you, it's me.

We guess at why things end,
we ruin things, we start and stall,

and all all all we do
is want.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Begging for It

“Saint or stranger, I still recklessly seek you.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Begging for It

“Leaving town I sat next to a senseless and beautiful boy
who asked where I live.
His unwashed hair or the way his eyes were just eyes…
the soul is a tiring thing. You can have it.
I don’t know what you mean’s what I told him.
It’s more simple than that. I’m just passing through.”
― Alex Dimitrov

“I’m interested in connecting with readers and strangers through poetry. I want to create real intimacy with my poems. Whether I do that through pulling from my personal life or using my fantasy life—or say history, whether that history is personal history or our collective histories—what’s important is that an experience is created. An experience that will hopefully matter to people and feel real. I want my poems to move people and make them want to live their lives, however complicated and impossible those lives may be. I think a poem can speak to the life you currently live but also to the lives you’ve lived before, the ones to come and also those you’ve yet to imagine. What else can do that? Not sex or money or other people.”
― Alex Dimitrov

“I'll never get over the fact
that the buildings all light up at night,
and the night comes every night
and without regret we let it go.
We sleep a little and we live.
That's what we do.”
― Alex Dimitrov, American Boys

“How again after months there is awe.
The most personal moment of the day
appears unannounced. People wear leather.
People refuse to die. There are strangers
who look like they could know your name.
And the smell of a bar on a cold night,
or the sound of traffic as it follows you home.
Sirens. Parties. How balconies hold us.
Whatever enough is, it hasn’t arrived.
And on some dead afternoon
when you’ll likely forget this,
as you browse through the vintage
again and again—there it is,
what everyone’s given up
just to stay here. Jewelled hairpins,
scratched records, their fast youth.
Everything they’ve given up
to stay here and find more.”
― Alex Dimitrov

“And how it turns out no one had the childhood they wanted and how they'd tell you this a little drunk, a little slant in less time than it took to finish a cigarette because sad things can't be explained.”
― Alex Dimitrov

“Doesn’t it bother you sometimes
what living is, what the day has turned into?
So many screens and meetings
and things to be late for.”
― Alex Dimitrov

“As a friend, it’s hard to know if you’ve ever really helped a Libra. They have no problem saying thank you, but they’re the type of person who would say it even if you didn’t help them. A part of them has resigned itself to knowing that the human condition is unknowable, with most things posing as answers while not being so.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac

“I love anyone who cannot say goodbye.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems

“I love the extra glass of wine happening somewhere, right now.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems

“J’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans. Who’d believe that what ends here continues, it’s senseless. Don’t listen. Use up all the memory. Use up all that’s there.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Together and By Ourselves

“I gave my life a real nice show. And then you went away so I could see you as graffiti in a bar just once. A man is stepping on the moon. The earth or your one life is gone. The phone rings in your leaving. Let your black hair, let your black hair get in my way always.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Together and By Ourselves

“What they require is one compliment so well observed and emphatic, they know you truly mean it because it has required your attention. Don’t throw the easy stuff at them. They’re not Leos. Libras want something more than adulation. They want something almost unendurable when it comes to love.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac

“A Taurus’s imagination always involves building. Whether it be a career or a lifelong love, a Taurus rejoices at the idea that if you put effort into something for a long time, you will be rewarded with something strong and solid that you can hang your hat on. This extends into expectations for everyone else around them, too. You must be a solid figure, someone dependable who also is able to spark their interests, and with your own solid sense of fire and passion. A Taurus’s imaginative landscape includes an endless sense of fire. Not a fire that would burn anything up, but one that brings warmth, that fuses things together, that solders pieces and melts things when necessary, that provokes and cajoles and pranks but is also good for lending itself to endless conversation and camaraderie. A real working fireplace. The imagination of a Taurus is a place where things get done, rather than happening on their own.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac

“Depressed Libra You: What are you doing this weekend? Libra: But really what are any of us doing, we’re on this planet for less than a hundred years, probably already halfway through our lives and there’s no real guarantee anyone will find true love, and if we do, how do we even know it’s what we want, or that it isn’t an illusion we’ve projected on another person? I’m not doing anything. You?”
― Alex Dimitrov, Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac

“TIME Again I am unprepared standing under an awning in the middle of summer autumn, winter, spring— watching the downpour in what could be the middle of life; wondering how long I’ll wait before becoming the rain.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems

“I love that we can fail at love and continue to live.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems

“I love the sun for showing up every day.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems

“Why does the sea hold what it loves most below?

- Together and by Ourselves”
― Alex Dimitrov

“Make sure you date and sign here then save all the soft things. Because everyone wants to know when it was, how it happened — say something about it.”
― Alex Dimitrov

“The person you think of/ despite their cruelty. The sun and its cruelty./ How it's kept its distance and kept us alive./ Not needing to know anything about what we do/ with the rest of desire.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems

“I love how at any moment I could forgive someone from the past.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems

“I love skipping anything casual—“hi, how are you, it’s been forever”—and getting straight to the center of pain. Or happiness.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems

“What does the moon know of our language, our care for its perceived loneliness which may be its one joy.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems

“When the waiter tells me his name, it’s the part of the meal I like most.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Together and By Ourselves

“I love seeing what we do with what we can’t change.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems