Home > Topic > luminescence
1 " Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massiveinsect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the endof a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurtin your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kindsof women—those you write poems aboutand those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought youa bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addictionlyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I workedwithin the confines of my character, castas the bad boy in your life, the Magellanof your dark side. We don’t have a past so muchas a bunch of electricity and liquor, powernever put to good use. What we had togethermakes it sound like a virus, as if we caughtone another like colds, and desire was merelya symptom that could be treated with soupand lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I’m still not immuneto your waterfall scent, still haven’t developedantibodies for your smile. I don’t know how longregret existed before humans stuck a word on it.I don’t know how many paper towels it would taketo wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the lightof a candle being blown out travels fasterthan the luminescence of one that’s just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffinginto each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trickbirthday candle—didn’t make the silenceany easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kissesI scrawled on your neck were writtenin disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of youso hard one of your legs would pop outof my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d pressyour face against the porthole of my submarine.I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen yearsto reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skiddingoff the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyridingover flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolateto be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphyof each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraphfrom the volumes of what couldn’t be said. "
― Jeffrey McDaniel
2 " Prison MoonFour a.m. work duty and I beginmy solitary trudge from outer compoundto main building. A shivering guard,chilled in his lonely outpost, strip searchesme until content that my inconsequential nudity.poses no threat and then whispersthe secret code that allows me admittance into the open quarter-mile walkway.I chuff my way into another dayas ice glints on the razor wireand the rifles note my numbed passage,silent but for my huffs and scuffleon the cracked, slippery sidewalk A new moon, veiled in wispy fogand beringed in glory, hangs over the prison, its gaudy glow taunting the halogen spotlights.The moon’s creamy pull upsetssome liquid equilibrium within meand like tides, wolves and all manner of madmen, I surrender disturbed by the certainty that under the bony luminescence of a grinning moon The lunar deliriums grip meand I howl--once, then again, andsurely somewhere an unbound sleeper stirs, penitence is dying a giddy death.I shake myself saneand as the echoes hangin the frigid air I explainto the wild-eyed guard that convicts, like all animals under the leash,must bay at the beauty beyond them. "
3 " You must not think of time as a quantity, a period, a measure. Look at the sky," Gwynneth said. " The moon has now slipped away to another night, into another world. It was not the time it was here that you remember, Faolan, but rather the luminescence of the air, the blue shadows cast by the trees in its light. It was not the length of the time but the quality of the moon's light that you felt and remember." Gwynneth paused. " It is the value, the quality that lives on. "
4 " Reality does not create the entire womb of human life. We have eyes that witness truth and beauty. We are creatures that think, plan, dream, and remember. The lambent luminescence supplied by human memory reveals that we live in a dream world. Human imagination tied to memory tells us how to live today and forevermore. "
― , Dead Toad Scrolls
5 " A part of me sought the light in all the people I knew, but with the Shadows, it was like bringing them back from a subterfuge comma. Literally tearing the veil of blackness down and showing them the luminescence of light. "
― Laura Kreitzer , Abyss (Timeless, #3)
6 " I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion ... Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity ... Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics. "
― Richard Dawkins , The God Delusion
7 " The desert at night was black and a strange madder-tinted silver; the sky was black, and the great contorted cliffs, and the vast expanses of sand that stretched out in all directions. But the red moon cast a pale crimson-tinged luminescence over everything, and far above the stars were glittering points of silver. "
8 " The light was luminescence and gloom, like the sky at midnight speckled with stars. All she could smell was the ocean... "
― Samantha Lee Warner , When the Crows Caw
9 " The sun, moon, and stars God gave to the world, but He embedded their glories in your countenance just for me. Woven in your hair are the sun's shimmering golden rays. From your face glows the pale luminescence of the moon. And in your eyes God sprinkled a million stars to twinkle against a backdrop of endless night. You are my celestial light. "
― Richelle E. Goodrich , Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
10 " The source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven's stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies,. And while a mistake's till burning, ruined love or lsot faith can make you think you're done, and you can't go on. But it's not true. It's never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you're lost, the luminescence never leaves you. Any good thing that dies inside ca rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesnt know how to quit, because it doesn't know how to lie. You lift your eyes from the page, fall into the smile of a perfect stranger, and the searching starts all over again. It's not what it was. It's always different. It's always something else. But the new forest that grows back in a scarred heart is sometimes wilder and stronger than it was before the fire. And if you stay in there, in that shine within yourself, that new place of light, forgiving everything and never giving up, sooner or later you'll always find yourself right back there where love and beauty made the world: at the beginning. The beginning. The beginning. "
― Gregory David Roberts
11 " The source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven's stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies. And while a mistake's till burning, ruined love or lost faith can make you think you're done, and you can't go on. But it's not true. It's never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you're lost, the luminescence never leaves you. Any good thing that dies inside can rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesn't know how to quit, because it doesn't know how to lie. You lift your eyes from the page, fall into the smile of a perfect stranger, and the searching starts all over again. It's not what it was. It's always different. It's always something else. But the new forest that grows back in a scarred heart is sometimes wilder and stronger than it was before the fire. And if you stay in there, in that shine within yourself, that new place of light, forgiving everything and never giving up, sooner or later you'll always find yourself right back there where love and beauty made the world: at the beginning. The beginning. The beginning. "
12 " Comrades in the struggle! The position of modern man is not merely lamentable; one might even say that there is no condition, because man hardly exists. Nothing exists to which one could point and say: 'There, that is Homo Zapiens.' HZ is simply the residual luminescence of a soul fallen asleep; it is a film about the shooting of another film, shown on a television in an empty house. "
― Victor Pelevin , Homo Zapiens