Best opening line in a poem?

"you want to know why I hate you, well I'll try and explain..."

well, it's a song...

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." -Kipling

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Coleridge

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."

Robert Frost, baby!

"There once was a man from Nantucket.."

"There once was a girl from Nantucket"

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary

Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere . . .

I would rather be ashes than dust!

I'm no beatnik commie, but I always thought "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," was a pretty good opener.

"The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high."

"April is the cruelest month." -T.S. Eliot

"Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare." -Edna St. Vincent Millay

"What happens to a dream deferred?" -Langston Hughes

"Do not go gentle into that good night." -Dylan Thomas

And since others are using whole stanzas:

"Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul." -William Ernest Henley

As a poet, creative writing professor and track coach, I love this post! How about this one frome Frank O'Hara:

"I live above a dyke bar and I'm happy."

Or this one from Dean Young, which pretty much sums up my worldview:

"How goofy and horrible is life...."

Today's Huck Finn wrote:

"Do not go gentle into that good night." -Dylan Thomas

yes, that and the following are my favorites

"gather ye rosebuds while ye may..."

Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity

To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment

Would you capture it or just let it slip?

Eminem

Here I sit, broken-hearted

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.