Three matches one by one struck in the night
The first to see your face in its entirety
The second to see your eyes
The last to see your mouth
And the darkness all around to remind me of all these
As I hold you in my arms.
I often repeat silently
that you must live in rememberance only
when few days are left to me.
What is past
is as if never was.
The past is a lace that
clenches at my throat to my mind
and takes energy from facing my present.
The past is only the smoke
of who hasn't lived.
What I have already seen
doesn't mean anything anymore.
The past and the future
aren't reality but only fleeting illusions.
I must be free from time
and live the present since there isn't any other time
than this wonderful moment.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
We never know how high we are
Till we are asked to rise
And then if we are true to plan
Our statures touch the skies -
The Heroism we recite
Would be a normal thing
Did not ourselves the Cubits warp
For fear to be a King.
If I should'nt be alive
When the Robins come,
Give the one in Red Cravat,
A Memorial crumb -
If I could'nt thank you,
Being fast asleep,
You will know I'm trying
With my Granite lip!
Jazz killed itself
But dont let poetry kill itself
Dont be afraid
of the cold night air
Dont listen to institutions
When you return manuscripts to
brownstone
dont bow and scuffle
for Edith Wharton pioneers
or ursula major nebraska prose
just hang in your own backyard
and laugh play pretty
cake trombone
and if somebody gives you beads
juju, jew, or otherwise,
sleep with em around your neck
Your dreams'll maybe better
There's no rain
there's no me
I'm telling ya man
sure as shit.
Part of the morning stars
The moon and the mail
The ravenous X, the raving ache,
-the moon Sittle La
Pottle, teh, teh, teh,
The poets in owlish old rooms
who write bent over the words
know that words were invented
because nothing was nothing
In use of words, use words,
the X and the blank
And the Emperor's white page
And the last of the Bulls
Before spring operates
Are all lotsa nothin
which we got anyway
So we'll deal in the night
in the market of words.
I'm a tranquillizer,
I act at home,
I work in the office,
I face exams,
I show up for the hearing,
I glue together carefully broken cups -
you only have to take me,
make me melt under your tongue,
you only have to swallow me
with a sip of water.
I know how to treat unhappiness,
how to face bad news,
reduce justice,
risk the absence of God,
choosing a nice little mourning hat.
What are you waiting for -
trust in chemical pity.
You're still a young man (woman),
you should sort yourself out somehow.
Who said life should be lived with courage?
Give me your abyss -
I'll stuff it with sleep.
You'll be grateful for your standing fall.
Sell me your soul.
There won't be another buyer.
There isn't another devil anymore.
I am a poet, a unanimous
cry, am
a cleat of dreams
a fruit
of innumerable conflicting grafts
ripened in the hothouse
But the same earth bears
your people
as carries me
Italy
In this, the uniform
of your soldier, I rest
as if
it were the cradle
of my father
Cease murdering the dead.
If you hope not to perish, if you
Want sound of them again,
Stop crying out, cease
The crying out of it.
They have a barely heard whispering,
No more than the increase of grass,
Happy where no man passes.
I live my life in widening circle
That reach out across the world.
I may not ever complete the last one,
But I give myself to it.
I circle around God, that primordial tower.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
And I still don't know: am I a falcon,
A storm, or a great song?