Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
W. S. Merwin, “Separation” from The Second Four Books of Poems (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1993). Copyright © 1993 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc.Source: Poetry (January 1962).
“In America,
sex is an obsession,
in other parts of the world
it’s a fact.”
-Marlene Dietrich
Let the wretches who today
include your name
in their books--the Damasos,
the Gerardos, the sons
of bitches, silent accomplices of
the executioner-know
that your martyrdom
won't be expunged, that your
death
will fall on their entire moon of
cowards.
And to those who denied you in
their rotten laurel....
-Pablo Neruda
If—
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
– Rudyard Kipling, 1895
a la Cara"Fox" Pflueger
“Let us toast to animal pleasures,
to escapism,
to rain on the roof and instant coffee,
to unemployment insurance and library cards,
to absinthe and good-hearted landlords,
to music and warm bodies and contraceptives…
and to the ‘good life,’
whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.”
a la J*** C**k via fb: These are the last words of William Burroughs— written the day he died
Thinking is not enough.
Nothing is.
There is no final enough of wisdom, experience —
any fucking thing.
No Holy Grail, no Final Satori,
no final solution.
Just conflict.
Only thing can resolve conflict is love,
like I felt for Fletch and Ruski, Spooner and Calico.
Pure love.
What I feel for my cats present and past.
Love?
What is It?
The Most natural painkiller that there is.
LOVE.
A hater he came and sat by a ditch,
And he took an old cracked lute;
And he sang a song which was more of a screech
‘Gainst a woman that was a brute.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822
From time to time
The clouds give rest
To the moon beholders
b.g.g. 