Quotes by Poets - Page 442

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.Write, for example,'The night is shatteredand the blue stars shiver in the distance.'The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.Tonight I can write the saddest lines.I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.Through nights like this one I held her in my armsI kissed her again and again under the endless sky.She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.How could one not have loved her great still eyes.Tonight I can write the saddest lines.To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.What does it matter that my love could not keep her.The night is shattered and she is not with me.This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.My sight searches for her as though to go to her.My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.The same night whitening the same trees.We, of that time, are no longer the same.I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.Because through nights like this one I held her in my armsmy sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.Though this be the last pain that she makes me sufferand these the last verses that I write for her.
Live or die, but don't poison everything...Well, death's been herefor a long time --it has a hell of a lotto do with helland suspicion of the eyeand the religious objectsand how I mourned themwhen they were made obsceneby my dwarf-heart's doodle.The chief ingredientis mutilation.And mud, day after day,mud like a ritual,and the baby on the platter,cooked but still human,cooked also with little maggots,sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,the damn bitch!Even so,I kept right on going on,a sort of human statement,lugging myself as ifI were a sawed-off bodyin the trunk, the steamer trunk.This became perjury of the soul.It became an outright lieand even though I dressed the bodyit was still naked, still killed.It was caughtin the first place at birth,like a fish.But I play it, dressed it up,dressed it up like somebody's doll.Is life something you play?And all the time wanting to get rid of it?And further, everyone yelling at youto shut up. And no wonder!People don't like to be toldthat you're sickand then be forcedto watchyoucomedown with the hammer.Today life opened inside me like an eggand there insideafter considerable diggingI found the answer.What a bargain!There was the sun,her yolk moving feverishly,tumbling her prize --and you realize she does this daily!I'd known she was a purifierbut I hadn't thoughtshe was solid,hadn't known she was an answer.God! It's a dream,lovers sprouting in the yardlike celery stalksand better,a husband straight as a redwood,two daughters, two sea urchings,picking roses off my hackles.If I'm on fire they dance around itand cook marshmallows.And if I'm icethey simply skate on mein little ballet costumes.Here,all along,thinking I was a killer,anointing myself dailywith my little poisons.But no.I'm an empress.I wear an apron.My typewriter writes.It didn't break the way it warned.Even crazy, I'm as niceas a chocolate bar.Even with the witches' gymnasticsthey trust my incalculable city,my corruptible bed.O dearest three,I make a soft reply.The witch comes onand you paint her pink.I come with kisses in my hoodand the sun, the smart one,rolling in my arms.So I say Liveand turn my shadow three times roundto feed our puppies as they come,the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!Despite the pails of water that waited,to drown them, to pull them down like stones,they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blueand fumbling for the tiny tits.Just last week, eight Dalmatians,3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord woodeachlike abirch tree.I promise to love more if they come,because in spite of crueltyand the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.The poison just didn't take.So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,repeating The Black Mass and all of it.I say Live, Live because of the sun,the dream, the excitable gift.
A man walks into a bar and says: Take my wife–please. So you do. You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her and she leaves you and you’re desolate.You’re on your back in your undershirt, a broken man on an ugly bedspread, staring at the water stains on the ceiling. And you can hear the man in the apartment above you taking off his shoes.You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up, you’re waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we arein the bowels of the thing: your world doesn’t make sense. And then the second boot falls. And then a third, a fourth, a fifth. A man walks into a bar and says: Take my wife–please. But you take him instead.You take him home, and you make him a cheese sandwich, and you try to get his shoes off, but he kicks you and he keeps kicking you. You swallow a bottle of sleeping pills but they don’t work. Boots continue to fall to the floor in the apartment above you.You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened. Your co-workers ask if everything’s okay and you tell them you’re just tired. And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile.A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says: Make it a double. A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says: Walk a mile in my shoes.A man walks into a convenience store, still you, saying: I only wanted something simple, something generic… But the clerk tells you to buy something or get out.A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still leftwith the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.
Hey you, dragging the halo-how about a holiday in the islands of grief? Tongue is the word I wish to have with you.Your eyes are so blue they leak.Your legs are longer than a prisoner'slast night on death row.I'm filthier than the coal miner's bathtuband nastier than the breath of Charles Bukowski.You're a dirty little windshield.I'm standing behind you on the subway, hard as calculus. My breathbe sticking to your neck like graffiti.I'm sitting opposite you in the bar, waiting for you to uncross your boundaries.I want to rip off your logicand make passionate sense to you.I want to ride in the swing of your hips.My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks, blazing your limbs into parts of speech.But with me for a lover, you won't needcatastrophes. What attracted me in the first placewill ultimately make me resent you.I'll start telling you lies, and my lies will sparkle, become the bad stars you chart your life by.I'll stare at other women so blatantlyyou'll hear my eyes peeling, because sex with you is like Great Britain: cold, groggy, and a little uptight.Your bed is a big, soft calculatorwhere my problems multiply.Your brain is a garageI park my bullshit in, for free.You're not really my new girlfriend, just another flop sequel of the first one, who was based on the true story of my mother.You're so ugly I forgot how to spell.I'll cheat on you like a ninth grade math test, break your heart just for the sound it makes.You're the 'this' we need to put an end to.The more you apologize, the less I forgive you.So how about it?