William Wordsworth: "The World Is Too Much with Us"

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

~ William Wordsworth, "The World Is Too Much with Us"

Choke, Chuck Palahniuk

By choking, you become a legend about themselves that these people will cherish and repeat until they die. They'll think they gave you life. You might be the one good deed, the deathbed memory that justifies their whole existence.

So be the aggressive victim, the big loser. A professional failure.

People will jump through hoops if you just make them feel like a god.

It's the martyrdom of Saint Me.

...

What's most important is unless you want a nasty trache scar, you'd better be breathing before anybody gets near you with a steak knife, a pocketknife, a box cutter.

...

It's all so easy. It's not about looking good, at least not on the surface - but you still win. Just let yourself be broken and humiliated. Just your whole life, keep telling people, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry....

~ Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

"Richard Cory," Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.


~ Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Richard Cory"

Richard Kelly, Donnie Darko original shooting script

If the sky were to open up...there would be no law...there would be no rule. There would only be you and your memories...the choices you've made and the people you've touched. The life that has been carved out from your subconscious is the only evidence by which you will be judged...by which you must judge yourself. Because when this world ends there will only be you and him...and no one else.

~ Richard Kelly, Donnie Darko original shooting script

Philip Larkin - "Aubade"

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
-- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

~ Philip Larkin - "Aubade"

"Unbidden," by Rae Armantrout

The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something
undone.

•

Did the palo verde
blush yellow
all at once?

Today's edges
are so sharp

they might cut
anything that moved.

•

The way a lost
word

will come back
unbidden.

You're not interested
in it now,

only
in knowing
where it's been.

~ Rae Armantrout, "Unbidden"

"Manufacturing," Rae Armantrout

1

A career in vestige management.

A dream job
back-engineering
shifts in salience.

I’m so far
behind the curve
on this.

So. Cal.
must connect with
so-called

to manufacture
the present.

Ubiquity’s
the new in-joke

bar-code hard-on,

a catch-phrase
in every segment.


2

The eye asks if the green,

frilled geranium puckers,
clustered at angles
on each stem,
are similar enough

to stop time.

It has asked this question already.

How much present tense
can any resemblance make?

What if one catch-phrase
appears in every episode?

Does the language go rigid?

The new in-joke
is a pun
pretending to be a bridge.

~ Rae Armantrout, "Manufacturing"

A City is not a Tree, Christopher Alexander

In any organized object, extreme compartmentalization and the dissociation of internal elements are the first signs of coming destruction.


~ Christopher Alexander, A City is not a Tree

"nobody but you," Charles Bukowski

nobody can save you but
yourself.
you will be put again and again
into nearly impossible
situations.
they will attempt again and again
through subterfuge, guise and
force
to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly
inside.

nobody can save you but
yourself
and it will be easy enough to fail
so very easily
but don't, don't, don't.
just watch them.
listen to them.
do you want to be like that?
a faceless, mindless, heartless
being?
do you want to experience
death before death?

nobody can save you but
yourself
and you're worth saving.
it's a war not easily won
but if anything is worth winning then
this is it.

think about it.
think about saving your self.

~ Charles Bukowski, "nobody but you"

Emily Horne, Joey Comeau, A Softer World

I don't know anything about death.

Except I feel certain
that I'll get to try again.

Game over.

Continue?

I know that's not what happens

in real life,

but I know
all sorts of things
that I don't believe.

~ Emily Horne, Joey Comeau, A Softer World: #392



We need more good crazy, it'd be nice to watch the news, and think, "that's fucking insane." but feel a little jealous, instead of just alone.

~ Emily Horne, Joey Comeau, A Softer World: #339


At first I was angry you had fallen in love with someone else
but you seem so happy now
I didn't even know you were sad

~ Emily Horne, Joey Comeau, A Softer World: #337

Wallace Stevens, "The Creations of Sound"

If the poetry of X was music,
So that it came to him of its own,
Without understanding, out of the wall

Or in the ceiling, in sounds not chosen,
Or chosen quickly, in a freedom
That was their element, we should not know

That X is an obstruction, a man
Too exactly himself, and that there are words
Better without an author, without a poet,

Or having a separate author, a different poet,
An accretion from ourselves, intelligent
Beyond intelligence, an artificial man

At a distance, a secondary expositor,
A being of sound, whom one does not approach
Through any exaggeration. From him, we collect.

Tell X that speech is not dirty silence
Clarified. It is silence made dirtier.
It is more than an imitation for the ear.

He lacks this venerable complication.
His poems are not of the second part of life.
They do not make the visible a little hard

To see nor, reverberating, eke out the mind
Or peculiar horns, themselves eked out
By the spontaneous particulars of sound.

We do not say ourselves like that in poems.
We say ourselves in syllables that rise
From the floor, rising in speech we do not speak.

Wallace Stevens, "The Creations of Sound"

"Tiara" by Mark Doty

Peter died in a paper tiara
cut from a book of princess paper dolls;
he loved royalty, sashes

and jewels. I don’t know,
he said, when he woke in the hospice,
I was watching the Bette Davis film festival

on Channel 57 and then—
At the wake, the tension broke
when someone guessed

the casket closed because
he was in there in a big wig
and heels, and someone said,

You know he’s always late,
he probably isn’t here yet—
he’s still fixing his makeup.

And someone said he asked for it.
Asked for it—
when all he did was go down

into the salt tide
of wanting as much as he wanted,
giving himself over so drunk

or stoned it almost didn’t matter who,
though they were beautiful,
stampeding into him in the simple,

ravishing music of their hurry.
I think heaven is perfect stasis
poised over the realms of desire,

where dreaming and waking men lie
on the grass while wet horses
roam among them, huge fragments

of the music we die into
in the body’s paradise.
Sometimes we wake not knowing

how we came to lie here,
or who has crowned us with these temporary,
precious stones. And given

the world’s perfectly turned shoulders,
the deep hollows blued by longing,
given the irreplaceable silk

of horses rippling in orchards,
fruit thundering and chiming down,
given the ordinary marvels of form

and gravity, what could he do,
what could any of us ever do
but ask for it.

~ Mark Doty, "Tiara"

"Last Words," Michael Symmons Roberts

(i)

You have a new message:

Kiss the kids goodbye from me

Keep well, keep strong, you know
I'm sure, but here's to say I love you.
I lay these voice-prints

like a set of tracks, to stop

you getting lost among the tall trees
beneath the break-less canopy,
on the long slow walk you take
from here without me.



(ii)

You have a new message:

I do not want to leave you this
magnetic print, this digit trace,
my coded and decoded voice.

I do not want to leave you.

If I had a choice, my last words
would be carried to your window
on three slips of sugar paper in
the beaks of birds of paradise.
The words would say,

I'm sure you know,

I love you.



(iii)

You have a new message:

I throw my voice across the city,

but it meets such a cacophony

we overload the network.

Countless last words divert

on to backup spools and hard drives.
Systems analyst turns archaeologist:

his fingertips, as delicate as brushes,
sift through sediment of conferences,
helpline hints, arguments and cold calls,
searching for the ones that say

You know, I'm sure, I love you.



(iv)

You have a new message:

This is the voice you hear in dreams,
this is the tape you cannot

bear to play. This is the voice-mail
you keep in a sealed silk bag

in a tin box in the attic.

But the message is out - in

the sick-beds and the darkened rooms;
in the billowing curtains

and the hush so heavy

you can hear the pulse in your wrists.
The message is out, in the ether,

in the network of digits and wires.

I know, you're sure, I love you.



(v)

You have a new message:

Don’t remember this, don’t save

this message. Keep instead
the pictures of last Sunday

in the park when summer

leaves were turning, Rollerbladers

hand-in-hand, our boys

throwing fists of cut grass at each other.
Think of the extravagance of green,
and think especially of the sky,

its blinding cloudlessness.

You know, I'm sure, but here's

to say I love you.



(vi)

You have a new message:

This is the still, small voice

you longed to hear among the ruins.
This is the voice you fished

with microphones on long lines,
lowered into cracks between

the rocks of this new mountain.

And your ears ache with the effort,
the sheer will to listen, to conjure
my words, your name on my lips,
out of nowhere. Here's to say.



(vii)

You have a new message:

When a city is wounded,

before it moans, before it kneels,

it draws a breath, and keeps it,

as though all phones are on hold,
all radios de-tuned, cathedrals locked
and all parks vacant.

It becomes a windless forest.

But remember, silence is not absence.
Learn to weigh them,

one against the other.

Each room of our house contains

a different emptiness. Listen.

Then break it. Say

you know, I'm sure, I love you.



(viii)

You have a new message:

Do not forget the beauty of aeroplanes,
those long, slow pulses from the sun
which passed above our garden as

we lay out in the heat. Do not forget
their gentle night-time growl,

and how we used to picture people in them
- sleeping, talking, just as we were,
how we used to guess the destinations.

Do not forget the grace of aeroplanes,
the majesty of skyscrapers.

You know, I'm sure.



(ix)

You have a new message:

Still, a year on, you rifle through
black boxes, mail-boxes, voice-boxes,
in search of my final words.

You hunt them in the white noise
between stations on the radio, the blank
face of a TV with the aerial pulled out.
You walk in crowds, wondering

if my words were passed to him,

or her, as messenger. If I'd had time

to leave you words, you know, I'm sure,
they would have been I love you.



(x)

You have a new message:

Now, my voice stored on your mobile,

I can tell you fifty times a day

how much I love you. "Tell the kids,"

I say. I don't know if you still do.
Sometimes, when you're out of town,

on trains, or in the shadow of tall buildings
You lose the signal. The network breaks.
You hear vowels splinter in my throat,

as if struck by a sudden despair.



(xi)

You have a new message:

Where did my last words go?

Out and out on radio waves

into the all-engulfing emptiness,
fading to a whisper as they cross

from sky, to space, to nothing.

Or in, and in, as litany repeated

in your heart until all tape is obsolete.

Each cadence, every tongue-tick,
every breath is perfect, as you say
my words: You know, I'm sure.



(xii)

You have a new message:

There is nothing new in this.

My voice has printed like a bruise,

like a kiss, like a kiss so strong

it leaves a bruise. I love you.

You know it, I'm sure.

Beyond the smoking ruins,

smoking planes, and empty rooms,
above and beyond is a network.

A matrix of souls,

as fragile as lace,

but endless and unbreakable.

To save the message, press.

- Michael Symmons Roberts, "Last Words"

Paul Auster, Invisible, excerpts

I will be robbed of my old age. I try not to feel bitter about it, but sometimes I can't help myself. Life is shit, I know, but the only thing I want is more life, more years on this godforsaken earth.

Deere Mom Ime in the lake Lov Andy

You take her in your arms and whisper: I don't want to go. You say it again I don't want to go. And then you step back from her, put your head down, and go.

Unbidden, a forgotten verse from Ecclesiastes comes roaring into his consciousness. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly... As he jots down the words in the right-hand margin of his poem, he wonders if this isn't the truest thing he has written about himself in months. The words may not be his own, but he feels that they belong to him.

For the next three days, he steadfastly adheres to this regimen of silence. He sees no one, talks to no one, and bit by bit he begins to feel somewhat stronger in his loneliness, as if the stringencies he has forced upon himself have ennobled him in some way, reacquainting him with the person he once imagined himself to be.

~ Paul Auster, From: Invisible

Assorted Quotes, Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle.


Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other.


Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?

~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Craig Arnold, excerpts

From: "Meditation on a Grapefruit"

                             a discipline
precisely pointless       a devout
involvement of the hands and senses
a pause     a little emptiness

each year harder to live within
each year harder to live without



From: "The Invisible Birds of Central America"

Perhaps they are not multiple         but one
a many-mooded trickster         whose voice is rich
and infinitely various         whose feathers
liquify the rainbow         rippling scarlet
emerald indigo         whose streaming tail
is rare as a comet's         a single glimpse of which
is all that you could wish for         the one thing
missing         to make your eyes at last feel full
to meet this wild need of yours         for wonder



From: "Incubus"

                              And that would be their secret.   
The power to feel another appetite
pass through her, like a shudder, like a cold
lungful of oxygen or hot sweet smoke,
fill her and then be stilled. The freedom to fall
asleep behind the blinds of his dark body
and wake cleanly. And when she swings her legs
over the edge of the bed, to trust her feet
to hit the carpet, and know as not before
how she never quite trusted the floor
to be there, no, not since she was a girl
first learning to swim, hugging her skinny
breastless body close to the pool-gutter,
skirting along the dark and darker blue
of the bottom dropping out—
                              Now she can stand,
and take the cup out of his giving hand,
and feel what they have learned inside each other
fair and enough, and not without a kind
of satisfaction, that she can put her foot
down, clear to the bottom of desire,
and find that it can stop, and go no deeper.

Uncouplings BY CRAIG ARNOLD

There is no I in teamwork
but there is a two maker

there is no I in together
but there is a got three
a get to her

the I in relationship
is the heart I slip on
a lithe prison

in all communication
we count on a mimic
(I am not uncomic)

our listening skills
are silent killings

there is no we in marriage
but a grim area

there is an I in family
also my fail

 ~ Craig Arnold, "Uncouplings"

"Bird-Understander" by Craig Arnold

Of many reasons I love you here is one

the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alright

so you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminal all the people
ignoring it because they do not know
what do with it except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to death

it makes you terribly terribly sad

You wish you could take the bird outside
and set it free or (failing that)
call a bird-understander
to come help the bird

All you can do is notice the bird
and feel for the bird and write
to tell me how language feels
impossibly useless

but you are wrong

You are a bird-understander
better than I could ever be
who make so many noises
and call them song

These are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurt

you have offered them
to me I am only
giving them back

if only I could show you
how very useless
they are not

~ Craig Arnold, "Bird-Understander"

“The Untrustworthy Speaker” Louise Glück

Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.
I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
That's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life I've been praised
For my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight-
In the end they're wasted-

I never see myself.
Standing on the front steps. Holding my sisters hand.
That's why I can't account
For the bruises on her arm where the sleeve ends . . .

In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.
People like me, who seem selfless.
We're the cripples, the liars:
We're the ones who should be factored out
In the interest of truth.

When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house. The azaleas
Red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself
To the older sister, block her out:
When a living thing is hurt like that
In its deepest workings,
All function is altered.

That's why I'm not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart
Is also a wound to the mind.

~ Louise Glück, "The Untrustworthy Speaker"

Waiting for Godot, Act 1, beginning and end. Samuel Beckett

A country road. A tree.


Evening.

...

ESTRAGON:
Well, shall we go?

VLADIMIR:
Yes, let's go.
They do not move.

Curtain.

~ Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Act 1. Opening and closing lines of script.

From: Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

There were worse reasons to keep a person hostage. You keep someone always for what he or she is worth to you, for what you can trade her for, money or freedom or somebody else you want more. Any person can be a kind of trading chip when you find a way to hold her. So to hold someone for a song, because the thing longed for was the sound of her voice, wasn't it all the same?

...

As if music was a separate thing you could drive yourself into, make love to, fuck.

...

Gen, in his genius for languages, was often at a loss for what to say when left with only his own words... It had occurred to him in his life that he had the soul of a machine and was only capable of motion when someone else turned the key. He was very good at working and he was very good at being by himself. Sitting alone in his apartment with books and tapes, he would pick up languages the way other men picked up women, with smooth talk and then later, passion.

...

"I'll shoot you, too, if I have to. Show me how to peel an eggplant. I've shot men over less than an eggplant."

...

He had never been so easy inside his own skin. He thought at once he had never been so alive and so much a ghost.

~ Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

Hell, Franz Wright

but if they were condemned to suffer
this unending torment, sooner or later
wouldn't they become holy?

~ Franz Wright, "Hell"

from: Clarification by Franz Wright

Listen to what I am saying,

but listen especially
to what I am not saying--

Of all the powers of love,
this: it is possible

to die; which means
it's possible to live.

Now it is possible to die
without being mad or afraid.

~ Franz Wright, from "Clarification"

Anaïs Nin,from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, volume 4

Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.

~ Anaïs Nin,from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, volume 4

"Night Walk," Franz Wright

The all-night convenience store's empty
and no one is behind the counter.
You open and shut the glass door a few times
causing a bell to go off,
but no one appears. You only came
to buy a pack of cigarettes, maybe
a copy of yesterday's newspaper--
finally you take one and leave
thirty-five cents in its place.
It is freezing, but it is a good thing
to step outside again:
you can feel less alone in the night,
with lights on here and there
between the dark buildings and trees.
Your own among them, somewhere.
There must be thousands of people
in this city who are dying
to welcome you into their small bolted rooms,
to sit you down and tell you
what has happened to their lives.
And the night smells like snow.
Walking home, for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It's unendurable, unendurable.

~ Franz Wright, "Night Walk"

“Self Portrait“ by David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

~ David Whyte, "Self Portrait"

"Father and Son," Cat Stevens

Father:
It's not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to know.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.

I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

Son:
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
It's always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

Father:
It's not time to make a change,
Just sit down, take it slowly.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to go through.
Find a girl, settle down,
if you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.

Son:
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it.
If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them you know not me.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

 ~ Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam, "Father and Son"

excerpts from: If You Follow Me, Malena Watrous

He told me that the best inventions were things that people needed without knowing it, things they wanted but couldn't name, holes they felt but didn't know how to fill. The key was to invent something so elemental that people would forget it hasn't always existed.
p. 59

"Have you heard a baby learn to speak? baby begins with singing. Speech comes second. When we learn fear, we forget how to sing."
p. 88

Wasn't I sad? Of course, I said then too. I could tell that she wanted me to be sadder, or more transparent in my sadness, to share it with her, split the pain. But "sad" was a pathetic little word, too small to contain what I felt. I was a shattered windshield: one tap and I'd collapse. The whole world had been pulled out from under me and I was still waiting to fall. I had wasted tears on so many silly things. How could I cry for this too?
p. 158

"I am confused," Miyoshi-sensei says. "I think correct answer is, 'I want to come with you.' But you wrote that correct answer is, 'I want to come inside you.'"

'Both sentences work grammatically," I say.

"But meaning is different?"

"Sort of." I hope he won't press for clarification.

"Prepositions are so difficult," he says. "I want to come near you. I want to come next to you. I want to come beside you. I want to come close to you... To me, it's so many ways to say the same thing. Can you hear something I don't?"

What I hear, for the first time, is the way these little words  - words distinguishing the relationship between one thing and another, one person and another - also keep them apart. No matter how close you get, you are still separate, still stuck in your own skin.
p. 267


 ~ Malena Watrous, If You Follow Me

From: Windfalls, Jean Hegland

And as Melody had so often pointed out, I'm sorry was just a bullshit way of saying no.

 ~ Jean Hegland, Windfalls

"Blues Tomorrow" | Malkia Amala Cyril

Bleeding into the sound
of headless hunters splintering the spines
of mules carrying my face like an undue burden
split nuclear and factioned
i am dust to this decaying corpse of civilization
abandoned to set with dusk
west of blood
sucking ozone free carbon dioxide
smoked out lungs
wrestled to a burial with the moon
back streets in the belly of Bed-Stuy
swallow bullets
peace treaties branded in the milky flow
of moonlit blood

then what is blood to you

if my abdomen is stretched inside out
seeping down the length of my tears
blowing in the speed of decapitated orgasms
edges of sun playing in the corners
of my mouth
if i could stop spinning
i swear i would
cement the cracks in my windowless smiles
taste blood sweating off the laughter
of thunder
screaming down the throat of
AK's
and be bulletproof
instead of shot to hell military style shit
instead of skin
the bottom line cranes toward jazz
my hunger is naked
and sleeping with revolution
i am the single drop and lava
wanting to arch my blues toward
the instinct of lonely
colored between silences thick with
Holiday or Smith
anger bled tears sing laughter with a soundtrack
and alive forever shaking this song screaming in my ears
and breathing deep the mountains of Martinique
and
oh god
i need to burn into somebody's
skin
be wild and with a different face for every moon
shit
i need to burn

~ Malkia Amala Cyril, "Blues Tomorrow"

"X," Mark Irwin

Because every thought is either memory or desire, the world

pulls away on both sides. Anyone's wish is a bird, and a wish

unfulfilled the unwinged skull, but a seed--fuzzy--pushes

its past toward tomorrow, all flutter and ecstasy. That's why

whenever I see people touch, I place a small white X where they

stood. Chalk, wind. Rock of sugar. Rock of salt. We spend our lives

licking at both. We sleep, eat, cry, sing. I like most when

it snows, when I must reinvent the shivering marvel of each

X, as knowledge is recollection, and love all discovery without delay.

~ Mark Irwin, "X"

"Startling Point," Isobel Dixon

You think me unsurprising. Wait –
I have a thing or two to share. I’ll never
be the river in full spate, the raging fire,
but, look, I have my moments too:
fish-leap, a flash of juggled silver
barely seen before the splash,
a fleeting shadow shooting through
the water to some secret place;
the sudden kudu in the underbrush,
etched by your headlights, leaping clear.
And you paused at the wheel, aware:
at first just awed by muscled grace,
but then, the mind’s eye’s shattered glass,
the heart’s revealing race, the taste of fear.

~ Isobel Dixon, "Startling Point"

"Please Understand (A Bachelor's Valentine)" by Stephen Dunn

When, next day, I found one of your earrings,
slightly chipped, on the steps leading up to
but also away from my house,

I couldn’t decide if I should return it to you
or keep it for myself in this copper box.
Then I remembered there’s always another choice

and pushed it with my foot into the begonias.
If you’re the kind who desires fragile mementos
of these perilous journeys we take,

that’s where you’ll find it. But don’t knock
on my door. I’ll probably be sucking the pit
out of an apricot, or speaking long distance

to myself. Best we can hope for on days like this
is that the thunder and dark clouds will veer elsewhere,
and the unsolicited sun will break through

just before it sets, a beautiful dullness to it.
Please understand. I’ve never been able to tell
what’s worth more—what I want or what I have.

~ Stephen Dunn, "Please Understand (A Bachelor's Valentine)"

Antilamentation | Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering
any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

- Dorianne Laux, "Antilamentation"

Charles Baudelaire, "Be Drunk"

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

- Charles Baudelaire, translated by Louis Simpson, "Be Drunk"

Rae Armantrout, "Veil"

The doll told me
to exist.

It said, "Hypnotize yourself."

It said time would be
transfixed.

*

Now the optimist

sees an oak
shiver

and a girl whiz by
on a bicycle

with a sense of pleasurable
suspense.

She budgets herself
with leafy

prestidigitation.

I too
am a segmentalist.

*

But I've dropped
more than an armful

of groceries or books

downstairs
into a train station.

An acquaintance says
she colors her hair

so people will help her
when this happens.

To refute her argument
I must wake up

and remember my hair's
already dyed.

*
As a mentalist
I must suffer

lapses

then repeat myself
in a blind trial.

I must write
punchlines only I
can hear

and only after
I've passed on

- Rae Armantrout, "Veil"

D.T. Max, The Family That Couldn't Sleep

"If prionlike diseases are infectious, though, they are not so in the traditional way. They are not 'alive' -- infection in their case is purely a mechanical process. The theory of prions threatens to diminish our uniqueness in the universe, which is one reason that -- like Galileo's insistence that the earth moves areound the sun -- it had trouble finding acceptance. It was another example of -- in the words of the German chemist Friedrich Wohler, who discovered in 1828 that he could synthesize the body's chemicals perfectly well in a test tube -- 'the great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.' The hypothesis was that life is ineffable, uniquely alive; the reality is that it is just chemical."

- D.T. Max, The Family That Couldn't Sleep

Inga Muscio, Cunt

Words outlive people, institutions, civilizations. Words spur images, associations, memories, inspirations and synapse pulsations. Words send off physical resonations of thought into the nethersphere. Words hurt, soothe, inspire, demean, demand, incite, pacify, teach, romance, pervert, unite, divide.

Words be powerful.

Grown-ups and children are not readily encouraged to unearth the power of words. Adults are repeatedly assured a picture is worth a thousand of them, while the playground response to almost any verbal taunt is "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

I don't beg so much as command to differ.


- Inga Muscio, Cunt

"Atlas" U.A. Fanthorpe

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

- U.A. Fanthorpe, "Atlas"

Perpetual Motion | Tony Hoagland

In a little while I’ll be drifting up an on-ramp,
sipping coffee from a styrofoam container,
checking my gas gauge with one eye
and twisting the dial of the radio
with the fingers of my third hand,
Looking for a station I can steer to Saturn on.

It seems I have the traveling disease
again, an outbreak of that virus
celebrated by the cracked lips
of a thousand blues musicians—song
about a rooster and a traintrack,
a sunrise and a jug of cherry cherry wine.

It's the kind of perceptual confusion
that makes your loved ones into strangers,
that makes a highway look like a woman
with air conditioned arms. With a
bottomless cup of coffee for a mouth
and jewelry shaped like pay phone booths
dripping from her ears.

In a little while the radio will
almost have me convinced
that I am doing something romantic,
something to do with “freedom” and “becoming”
instead of fright and flight into
an anonymity so deep

it has no bottom,
only signs to tell you what direction
you are falling in: CHEYENNE, SEATTLE,
WICHITA, DETROIT—Do you hear me,
do you feel me moving through?
With my foot upon the gas,
between the future and the past,
I am here—
here where the desire to vanish
is stronger than the desire to appear.

- Tony Hoagland, "Perpetual Motion"

"The Unknown Citizen" by W.H. Auden

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

- W.H. Auden, "The Unknown Citizen"

“Panic in the Year Zero,” by D.A. Powell

Bless the tourists in their “Alcatraz Rocks!” parkas

     on the upper deck of a double-decker
          in any given February bluster.
They could have sworn it would be warm here,
     just because the cryometer says it isn’t cold.

Who the hell would look at a cryometer?
     People from arctic places, I suppose.

People who must have flown in over the map’s flat face;
     who must have seen the latest developments;
          the delta’s brackish mouth; windmills
waving white banderoles against the crisping brown hills.
     Spring looks a lot like summer looks a lot
          like drought. What would anyone expect
if they knew the way planarity invites the opportunist.        
     Aren’t the dispatches the same, reaching them
in Chehalis, Waterloo and Asbury Park. Even
if folks don’t watch what passes now for news,
          I assume they go to cocktail parties.
               Or they Twitter.
They don’t all have snug jammies and Ovaltine,
     though they seem to get snugger by the minute.
What kind of help could they get if they could get help?
          Help them make this dull show seem like art.
     Help the supporting cast appear
in the end, summoned from the cities of the plain,
     and appear to end and end again
          as in a wide shot of the Battle of the Marne.
Be tolerant of those you cannot seem to understand.
               And other such advice.

It’s the quiet part of the morning service,
     while I’m writing this down:
Thank God for the quiet part.

And thank God for the one who held me to my wickedness;
     who asked me to revel in it,
          even though it cost us both a little dignity.
It’s easy for me to look back at what’s destroyed.
I knew it would be destroyed, like a wicked town.
I never thought “that town is where the heart is.”
I simply thought “that town is where the town is.”
Usually someplace inhospitable, and filled with
     handsome men. The kind who kill you
with their handsomeness, or their acute cordage.

Hell is the most miraculous invention of love,
          no matter how the love turns out.
Hell is the place from whence the music of longing—
which accounts for most of what we call music—
     gets written.

Yet, I’m tired of this idea of hell, no matter how functional.
     Sure, I’ve had my petty doubts.
Like the extra pills I’ve put in my Eva Braun box,
     waiting for the bomb to hit Bakersfield,
          or some other place in the near distance
(this plan only works if there’s some kind of distance)
          the sign that it’s time to pull up stakes,
head for those durable hills with my pemmican,
     my Port-o-pot, my jerry cans,
     and yes, I too would have Ovaltine.
Though I guess it would be Ovaltine made with water
          instead of milk.
Such would be the dark days
     if we think the dark days really must come.

But I have lived through perilous times,
     and I do not love them.
I cannot pretend I’m smart about such things.
I mean: look at the sloppy slew I’ve been.
     And you were there. And you.
You’ve seen me rumple down the sidewalk like a moocher.
Lord knows, you’ve seen me hit that sidewalk on my keister.

          “Scandalous,” the tourists said,
               and flashed.
And when the worst of the drama came,
     they clucked their tongues and threw their change.
Something inside each one of us is cocked
          like the ear of a hound,
and half the time we hunt, and half the time we rescue,
     because we’re never really sure
          if the humans will beat us or feed us.
If we are our better selves, it’s just a wonder.
And if we’re not.

     Even in our legends, angels come.
They try their best. But we’re such shits.
     And it’s not because we want to screw them.
We screw everything. We’re mankind. It’s what we do.
I’ve probably sullied a few white wings myself.
     That’s not the problem.
So much has passed between us, we’re practically cousins.
The problem is, we’re so bent on an ending,
          we’ll sunder the entire valley,
with conviction. With an invented coda of immunity.
Nobody in this picture is granted immunity.
     If it were available, I’d have gotten it for myself.

          Enough with the apocalypse, already.
Think of all the history you’ve read. It started somewhere.
     It started at absolute zero, is what you thought.
Just because you couldn’t know what came before.
          But imagine: something did.

 - D.A. Powell, “Panic in the Year Zero”

"The Journey" by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver, "The Journey"

“Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice” Ogden Nash

Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spent in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

“he said: you talk a wide variety of nowhere" Erin McNellis

he said: you talk a wide variety of nowhere.
locate yourself on your neuron map and maybe
i will understand. i said: i could no sooner find
the moon in its reflection. maybe they will read
my impreciseness and see the reality, and drink it
with sugar and cream. he said: i like my truth black.

i wrote him fever-dream-perfect letters about his
faults. when i was drunk i would forget everything
but love.

i am: woman, barefoot, eyes lowered.
in my breast is a jar of fireflies.

every time i reach for the moon, it ripples.

- Erin McNellis, "he said: you talk a wide variety of nowhere"

“Variations on the Word Love” Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love , you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

- Margaret Atwood, “Variations on the Word Love”

"The Girl Sleeps As If" Vera Pavlova

the girl sleeps as if
someone special is dreaming
the woman sleeps as if
war will break out tomorrow
the old woman sleeps
as if it's enough to feign
death and death will pass by
on the other side of sleep

- Vera Pavlova, "The Girl Sleeps As If"

J.B., Archibald MacLeish

We can never know
He answered me like the stillness of a star
That silences us asking

We are and that is all our answer
We are and what we are can suffer
But...
                      what suffers loves.
                                    

 And love
Will live its suffering again,
Risk its own defeat again,
Endure the loss of everything again
And yet again and yet again
In doubt, in dread, in ignorance, unanswered,
Over and over, with the dark before,
The dark behind it... and still live... still love

- J.B., Archibald MacLeish

Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

"But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit."

- Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

Marilyn Manson; The Long, Hard Road Out of Hell

"People don't keep journals for themselves. They keep them for other people, like a secret they don't want to tell but they want everyone to know. The only safe place for your thoughts is in your memory, which people can't take and read when you're not looking--at least not yet."

- Marilyn Manson; The Long, Hard Road Out of Hell

William Blake, "A Divine Image"

Cruelty has a human heart
And jealousy a human face,
Terror the human form divine,
And secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace seal'd,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

- William Blake, "A Divine Image"

A Widow For One Year by John Irving

"But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination."


- John Irving, A Widow For One Year

e. e. cummings, "Humanity i love you"

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

- e. e. cummings, "Humanity i love you"

"I'm In Love" Charles Bukowski

she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don't you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn't it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
piece of shit?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
I told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
I stood up in a cafe and screamed
I'M IN LOVE,
and now you've made a fool of me. . .
I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I've never been in one of these things before, I said,
these triangles. . .
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had
a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,
centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and
sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.

- Charles Bukowski, "I'm In Love"

Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

"Ignore how it feels when the only real talent you have is for hiding the truth. You have a God-given knack for committing a terrible sin. You have a natural gift for denial. A blessing.

If you could call it that.

All evening I clean, and I still feel dirty."

- Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

SparkNotes, Antigone

"Unlike melodrama, tragedy is clean, restful, and flawless. In tragedy, everything is inevitable, hopeless, and known. All are bound to their parts."

- SparkNotes on Antigone

Saul Bellow

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."

- Saul Bellow,To Jerusalem and Back: A personal account

George Orwell

"Any life, when viewed from the inside, is simply a series of defeats."

- George Orwell

"Six Words" Lloyd Schwartz

yes
no
maybe
sometimes
always
never


Never?
Yes.
Always?
No.
Sometimes?
Maybe—

maybe
never
sometimes.
Yes—
no
always:

always
maybe.
No—
never
yes.
Sometimes,

sometimes
(always)
yes.
Maybe
never . . .
No,

no—
sometimes.
Never.
Always?
Maybe.
Yes—

yes no
maybe sometimes
always never.

- Lloyd Schwartz, "Six Words"