SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK

I despise the kind of book that tells you how to make yourself happy. The first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you are in.

H. L. HIX - "Blur"

Turns out lots of lines prove blurry I once thought sharp.
Some blur from further away, some from closer in.
Plant/animal, for instance. On which side, and why,
the sessile polyps, corals and sea anemones?
Same problem saying why my self must be internal.
Where do I see those finches glinting at the feeder?
To experience the is-ness of what is,
I’d need to locate the here-ness of what’s here.
Or be located by it. Or share location with it.
There’s a line I want to blur: between my senses
and my self. And another: between my senses
and the world. That anemone looks more like a lily
than an appaloosa. Looks, and acts. I feel that fizz
of finches sparkle on my tongue, the back of my throat.
I don’t say these words until I hear them. My voice
visits. Is visitation. I would choose the role
of visitor over visited, if I got to choose.
Those finches trill and warble in sequences of phrases.
I can tell there’s pattern, but not what the pattern is.
I can say I hear them (I do hear them) in my sleep,
but I can’t say what that means. Their twitters and chirps
start early, before I wake. I can say they chatter all day
(they do), when I’m hearing them and when I’m not,
but I can’t say how I know that. The back of my hand
always feels as if it’s just been lightly touched.

Greta Garbo by Edward Steichen, 1928

ORSON WELLES

We now sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

NĀGĀRJUNA - “Dedicatory Verse”

I prostrate to the Perfect Buddha,
The best of teachers, who taught that
Whatever is depedently arisen is
Unceasing, unborn,
Unannihilated, not permanent,
Not coming, not going,
Without distinction, without identity,
And free from conceptual construction.

TARJEI VESAAS - “Sun-Corner”

At home there’s a sun-corner
where spring quietly stirs.
Dripping all day long.

Clear drops from the snow-rim,
they reflect both good and bad
in their brief fall, and are shattered.
The sun is a hot cataract.

In that sun-corner,
where you were born -
it’s those drops that should
mirror you, and wet your lips,
pure from the snow-rim and
right into your heart.

It’s in that faint smell of
spring moisture you should fall asleep.
That call you should heed.
There, everything would feel right.

It’s all moving downhill.
Everything’s oozing toward a distant
goal,
on its way to the sea.
An unknown sea inside a dream.
All of spring’s sorrow is heading there.
All thoughts spiral there
and then disappear.

Your childhood sun-corner is where
you are when the call sounds.

GILLES DELUZE from Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly, and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered:

Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?

RYŌKAN

in this dream world
we doze
and talk of dreams –
dream, dream on,
as much as you wish 

ABUL ʿALA AL-MAʿARRI

The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains.

UMBERTO ECO

Invention can produce reality.

HANNAH ARENDT

The third world is not a reality, but an ideology.

ELIAS CANETTI

The Agony of Flies
____________________

It isn’t being alone that I need to know, for that comes easy to me. I like being alone; what I need to learn is how to keep silent around people … It doesn’t matter to whom my words are addressed or whether or not they are understood; the words in themselves have a horrifying and devastating effect on me. They are too strong; I need to muffle them by writing them down … I myself cannot evade my words; I am at their mercy; I take them in whole; I understand them fully and they shake me the way a storm shakes up the sea.

YUAN MEI - "Nearing Hao-pa"

(I saw in the mist a little village of a few tiled roofs and joyfully admired it.)

There’s a stream, and there’s bamboo,
there’s mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hid, clouded hamlet,
a mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
have to live, to get
that simple.

HAROLD PINTER
Party Time

You don’t have to believe anything. You just have to shut up and mind your own business, how many times do I have to tell you? You come to a lovely party like this, all you have to do is shut up and enjoy the hospitality and mind your own fucking business. How many more times do I have to tell you? You keep hearing all these things. You keep hearing all these things spread by pricks about pricks. What’s it got to do with you?

FANNIE LOU HAMER

I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared to [register to vote] - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.

DAVID HUME

The worst speculative skeptic I ever knew was a much better man than the best superstitious devotee and bigot.

Ft Tilden bunker ruins and graffiti.

LEAD BELLY - “There’s a Man Going ‘Round Taking Names”

There’s a man going ‘round taking names
There’s a man going ‘round taking names
He’s been taking my father’s name
And he left my heart in vain
There’s a man going 'round taking names.

There’s a man going 'round taking names
There’s a man going 'round taking names
He’s been taking my mother’s name
And he left my heart in vain
There’s a man going 'round taking names.

There’s a man going 'round taking names
There’s a man going 'round taking names
He’s been taking my sister’s name
And he left my heart in vain
There’s a man going 'round taking names.

There’s a man going 'round taking names
There’s a man going 'round taking names
He’s been taking my brother’s name
And he left my heart in vain
There’s a man going 'round taking names.

There’s a man going 'round taking names
There’s a man going 'round taking names
He’s been taking my father’s name
And he left my heart in vain
There’s a man going 'round taking names

Colin Kaepernick, American hero.

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

If I had followed my better judgement always, my life would have been a very dull one.

URSULA K. LE GUIN from her 2014 Speech at the National Book Awards

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words.

THOMAS MERTON from Introductions East & West

It is true, political problems are not solved by love and mercy.

But the world of politics is not the only world, and unless political decisions rest on a foundation of something better and higher than politics, they can never do any real good for men. When a country has to be rebuilt after war, the passions and energies of war are no longer enough. There must be a new force, the power of love, the power of understanding and human compassion, the strength of selflessness and cooperation, and the creative dynamism of the will to live and to build, and the will to forgive.

The will for reconciliation.

DŌGEN

A white heron
Hiding itself
In the snowy field,
Where even the winter grass
Cannot be seen.

RAINER MARIA RILKE - “I live my life in widening circles”

I live my life in widening circles
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?


Translation by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

EDMUND WHITE from Our Young Man

These absurd showbiz queens are as much a part of New York street life as sirens, steam from manholes, or ghostly Asian deliverymen ferrying chop-suey-to-go on unlit bikes going the wrong way.

Philippe Caza - 1972

GEORGE HARRISON

I fell in love, not with anything or anybody in particular but with everything.

FERNANDO PESSOA

I want to be a work of art, at least in my soul, since I can’t be one in my body.

SAMUEL BECKETT from Malone Dies

I wonder what my last words will be, written, the others do not endure, but vanish, into thin air. I shall never know.

ALAN WATTS

We suffer from the delusion that the entire universe is held in order by the categories of human thought, fearing that if we do not hold to them with the utmost tenacity, everything will vanish into chaos.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

____________________

I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hate in the world is religion and organized religion. Absolutely convinced of that. And I think it should be - religion - treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt.

So when I say that I think religion poisons everything, I’m not just doing what publishers like and coming up with a provocative subtitle. I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity.

It says we can’t be moral without “Big Brother,” without a totalitarian permission. It means we can’t be good to one another without this. It means we must be afraid.

We must also be forced to love someone whom we fear - the essence of sado-masochism, the essence of abjection, the essence of the Master/Slave relationship. And that it knows death is coming, and can’t wait to bring it on.

I say that is Evil.

And though I do, some nights, stay home, I enjoy more the nights when I go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and this ultimate stupidity.

TENSHIN REB ANDERSON from Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains: Dharma Talks on Zen Meditation

I don’t like the cold, but I love the cold. When I walk in the cold wind, I hate it, but I feel myself surrounded by the truth. I feel I am in the right place. The cold wind is so invigorating, so vital. And I hate it. I feel both of those things. I’m afraid the cold will take away my warm smile and warm heart. Certainly it can take away my warm fingers and warm toes. Can I find a way for this warm person to be settled in the cold mountains? If I stay too warm, I’ll be afraid of the cold. If I get too cold, I’ll be afraid of the cold. What is Buddha’s work in the middle of the cold? Have a dialogue with the cold, a dialogue with emptiness. Stare at the cold, stare at the not-you. If you look at it long enough, it will look back at you. The cold mountains will smile.

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS from The Wild Boys

Home is where your ass is and if you want to move you move your ass the first step is learning to change homes with someone else and have someone else’s ass.

HALLDÓR LAXNESS from The Fish Can Sing

A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father.

ELIZABETH BISHOP - "Lullaby for the Cat"

Minnow, go to sleep and dream,
close your great big eyes;
Round your bed Events prepare
The pleasantest surprise.

Darling Minnow, drop that frown,
Just cooperate,
Not a kitten shall be drowned
In the Marxist State.

Joy and Love will both be yours,
Minnow, don’t be glum.
Happy days are coming soon—
Sleep, and let them come…

CORMAC McCARTHY from Blood Meridian

One evening almost within sight of the town of El Paso they looked off toward the north where the Gileños wintered and they knew they would not be going there. They camped that night at the Hueco tanks, a group of natural stone cisterns in the desert. The rocks about in every sheltered place were covered with ancient paintings and the judge was soon among them copying out those certain ones into his book to take away with him. They were of men and animals and of the chase and there were curious birds and arcane maps and there were constructions of such singular vision as to justify every fear of man and the things that are in him. Of these etchings—some bright yet with color—there were hundreds, and yet the judge went among them with assurance, tracing out the very ones which he required. When he had done and while there yet was light he returned to a certain stone ledge and sat a while and studied again the work there. Then he rose and with a piece of broken chert he scappled away one of the designs, leaving no trace of it only a raw place on the stone where it had been. Then he put up his book and returned to the camp.

CHARLES WRIGHT - “Yard Work”

I think that someone will remember us in another time,
Sappho once said—more or less—
Her words caught
Between the tongue’s tip and the first edge of the invisible.

I hope so, myself now caught
Between the edge of the landscape and the absolute,
Which is the same place, and the same sound,
That she made.

Meanwhile, let’s stick to business.
Everything else does, the landscape, the absolute, the invisible.
My job is yard work—
I take this inchworm, for instance, and move it from here to there.

LI BAI - “Self-Abandonment”

I sat drinking and did not notice the dusk,
Till falling petals filled the folds of my dress.
Drunken I rose and walked to the moonlit stream;
The birds were gone, and men also few.

FERNANDO PESSOA

Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it’s all evaporating. I constantly feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else. What I’m attending here is a show with another set. And the show I’m attending is myself.

SAMUEL BECKETT from The Unnamable

I’ll clap an eye at random in the thick of the mess, on the off chance something might stray in front of it, then I’ll let down my trousers and shit stories on them, stories, photographs, records, sites, lights, gods and fellow-creatures, the daily round and common task.

Mink Stole as Dottie Hinkle in John Waters' SERIAL MOM.

LEONARD COHEN - "Famous Blue Raincoat"

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.
I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record.

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody's wife.

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake --

She sends her regards.

And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear --

Sincerely, L. Cohen

VIRGINIA WOOLF from To The Lighthouse

But slumber and sleep though it might there came later in the summer ominous sounds like the measured blows of hammers dulled on felt, which, with their repeated shocks still further loosened the shawl and cracked the tea-cups. Now and again some glass tinkled in the cupboard as if a giant voice had shrieked so loud in its agony that tumblers stood inside a cupboard vibrated too. Then again silence fell; and then, night after night, and sometimes in plain mid-day when the roses were bright and light turned on the wall its shape clearly there seemed to drop into this silence, this indifference, this integrity, the thud of something falling.

DŌGEN

Drifting pitifully in the whirlwind of birth and death,
As if wandering in a dream,
In the midst of illusion I awaken to the true path;
There is one more matter I must not neglect,
But I need not bother now,
As I listen to the sound of the evening rain
Falling on the roof of my temple retreat
In the deep grass of Fukakusa.

JAMES JOYCE from Ulysses

He laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage.

SAMUEL BECKETT from The Calmative

I hugged the walls, famished for shadow.

CAROLYN FORCHÉ - "The Museum of Stones

These are your stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,
collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,
battlefield, threshing floor, basilica, abattoir–
stones, loosened by tanks in the streets
from a city whose earliest map was drawn in ink on linen,
schoolyard stones in the hand of a corpse,
pebble from Apollinaire’s oui,
stone of the mind within us
carried from one silence to another,
stone of cromlech and cairn, schist and shale, horneblende,
agate, marble, millstones, ruins of choirs and shipyards,
chalk, marl, mudstone from temples and tombs,
stone from the tunnel lined with bones,
lava of a city’s entombment, stones
chipped from lighthouse, cell wall, scriptorium,
paving stones from the hands of those who rose against the army,
stones where the bells had fallen, where the bridges were blown,
those that had flown through windows, weighted petitions,
feldspar, rose quartz, blueschist, gneiss and chert,
fragments of an abbey at dusk, sandstone toe
of a Buddha mortared at Bamiyan,
stone from the hill of three crosses and a crypt,
from a chimney where storks cried like human children,
stones newly fallen from stars, a stillness of stones, a heart,
altar and boundary of stone, marker and vessel, first cast, lode and hail,
bridge stones and others to pave and shut up with,
stone apple, stone basil, beech, berry, stone brake,
stone bramble, stone fern, lichen, liverwort, pippin and root,
concretion of the body, as blind as cold as deaf,
all earth a quarry, all life a labor, stone-faced, stone-drunk
with hope that this assemblage of rubble, taken together, would become
a shrine or holy place, an ossuary, immoveable and sacred
like the stone that marked the path of the sun as it entered the human dawn.

Gloria Swanson and Judy Holliday - Academy Awards, 1951.

MILAREPA

If you lose all differentiation between yourselves and others,
fit to serve others you will be.
And when in serving others you will win success,
then shall you meet with me;
And finding me, you shall attain to Buddhahood.

SAMUEL BECKETT from Malone Dies

But I have felt so many strange things, so many baseless things assuredly, that they are perhaps better left unsaid. To speak for example of the times when I go liquid and become like mud, what good would that do? Or of the others when I would be lost in the eye of a needle, I am so hard and contracted? No, those are well-meaning squirms that get me nowhere.

EMINEM - “The Way I Am”

Whatever…
Dre, just let it run
Aiyyo turn the beat up a little bit
Aiyyo… this song is for anyone… fuck it
Just shut up and listen, aiyyo…

I sit back with this pack of Zig Zags and this bag
Of this weed it gives me the shit needed to be
The most meanest MC on this - on this Earth
And since birth I’ve been cursed with this curse to just curse
And just blurt this berserk and bizarre shit that works
And it sells and it helps in itself to relieve
All this tension dispensing these sentences
Getting this stress that’s been eating me recently off of this chest
And I rest again peacefully (peacefully)…
But at least have the decency in you
To leave me alone, when you freaks see me out
In the streets when I’m eating or feeding my daughter
Do not come and speak to me (speak to me)…
I don’t know you and no,
I don’t owe you a motherfucking thing
I’m not Mr. N'Sync, I’m not what your friends think
I’m not Mr. Friendly, I can be a prick
If you tempt me my tank is on empty (is on empty)…
No patience is in me and if you offend me
I’m lifting you 10 feet (lifting you 10 feet)… in the air
I don’t care who was there and who saw me just jaw you
Go call you a lawyer, file you a lawsuit
I’ll smile in the courtroom and buy you a wardrobe
I’m tired of all you (of all you)…
I don’t mean to be mean, but that’s all I can be it’s just me

And I am, whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
Radio won’t even play my jam
‘Cause I am, whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
I don’t know, it’s just the way I am

Sometimes I just feel like my father,
I hate to be bothered
With all of this nonsense it’s constant
And, “Oh, it’s his lyrical content -
- the song 'Guilty Conscience’ has gotten such rotten responses”
And all of this controversy circles me
And it seems like the media immediately
Points a finger at me (finger at me)…
So I point one back at 'em, but not the index or pinkie
Or the ring or the thumb, it’s the one you put up
When you don’t give a fuck, when you won’t just put up
With the bullshit they pull, 'cause they full of shit too
When a dude’s getting bullied and shoots up his school
And they blame it on Marilyn (on Marilyn)… and the heroin
Where were the parents at? And look where it’s at
Middle America, now it’s a tragedy
Now it’s so sad to see, an upper class city
Having this happening (this happening)…
Then attack Eminem 'cause I rap this way (rap this way)…
But I’m glad 'cause they feed me the fuel that I need for the fire
To burn and it’s burning and I have returned

And I am, whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
Radio won’t even play my jam
'Cause I am, whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
I don’t know it’s just the way I am

I’m so sick and tired of being admired
That I wish that I would just die or get fired
And dropped from my label, let’s stop with the fables
I’m not gonna be able to top on “My Name is… ”
And pigeon-holed into some pop-py sensation
That got me rotation at rock'n'roll stations
And I just do not got the patience (got the patience)…
To deal with these cocky Caucasians who think
I’m some wigger who just tries to be black 'cause I talk
With an accent, and grab on my balls, so they always keep asking
The same fucking questions (fucking questions)…
What school did I go to, what hood I grew up in
The why, the who what when, the where, and the how
'Til I’m grabbing my hair and I’m tearing it out
'Cause they driving me crazy (driving me crazy)… I can’t take it
I’m racing, I’m pacing, I stand and I sit
And I’m thankful for every fan that I get
But I can’t take a shit, in the bathroom
Without someone standing by it
No, I won’t sign your autograph
You can call me an asshole I’m glad

'Cause I am, whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
Radio won’t even play my jam
'Cause I am, whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
I don’t know, it’s just the way I am

LEONARD COHEN - "Democracy"

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

MAY SWENSON - "The DNA Molicule"

is The Nude Descending a Staircase
a circular one.
See the undersurfaces of the spiral treads
and the spaces in between.

She is descending and at the same
time ascending and she moves around herself.
For she is the staircase
“a protoplasmic framework an internal scaffolding

that twists and turns.”
She is a double helix mounting and dismounting

around the swivel of her imaginary spine.
The Nude named DNA can be constructed

as a model with matches and a ribbon of tape.
Be sure to use only 4 colors on 2 white strands

of twistable tape.
“Only matches of complementary colors

may be placed opposite each other.
The pairs are to be red and green

and yellow and blue.”
Make your model as high as the Empire

State Building and you
Have an acceptable replica of The Nude.

But and this is harder you must make her move in a continuous coil
an alpha-helix a double spiral

downward and upward at once
and you must make her increase

while at the same time occupying the same field.
She must be made “to maintain a basic topography”

changing yet remaining stable if she
is to perform her function which

is to produce and reproduce the microsphere.
Such a sphere is invisible to but

omnipresent in the naked eye
of The Nude.

It contains “a central region and
an outer membrane” making it able to divide

“to make exact copies of itself without limit.”
The Nude has “the capacity for replication

and transcription of all genesis.
She ingests and regurgitates

the genetic material it being
the material of her own cell-self.

From single she becomes double and
from double single.

As a woman ingests the demon sperm and with
the same membrane regurgitates

the mitotic double of herself
upon the slide of time

so the DNA molecule produces with a little pop
at the waistline of its viscous drop

a new microsphere the same size as herself
which proceeds singly to grow

in order to divide
and double itself.

So from single to double and double to single and
mounting while descending she expands while contracts

she proliferates while disappearing
at both of her ends.

Remember that red can only be
opposite green and blue opposite yellow.

Remember that the complementary pairs
of matches must differ slightly in length

“for nature’s pairs can be made only with units
whose structures permit an interplay of forces between the partners.”

I fixed a blue match opposite a red
match of the same length

in defiance of the rules pointed them away
from the center on the double-stranded tape.

I saw laid a number of eggs on eggs on the sticky side
of a twig.

I saw a worm with many feet grow out
of an egg.

The worm climbed the twig a single helix and
gobbled the magnified edge of a leaf

in quick enormous bites.
It then secreted out of itself a gray floss

with which it wrapped itself tail first and so on
until it had completely muffled

and encased itself head last as in a mummy pouch.
I saw plushy iridescent wings push moistly out

of the pouch.
At first glued

together they began to part.
On each wing I saw a large blue eye

open forever in the expression of resurrection.
The new Nude released the flanges of her wings

stretching herself to touch
at all points the outermost rim of the noösphere.

I saw that for her body from which the wings expanded
she had retained the worm.

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA - "Ode to the Maggot"

Brother of the blowfly
And godhead, you work magic
Over battlefields,
In slabs of bad pork

And flophouses. Yes, you
Go to the root of all things.
You are sound & mathematical.
Jesus, Christ, you're merciless

With the truth. Ontological & lustrous,
You cast spells on beggars & kings
Behind the stone door of Caesar's tomb
Or split trench in a field of ragweed.

No decree or creed can outlaw you
As you take every living thing apart. Little
Master of earth, no one gets to heaven
Without going through you first.

EDMUND WHITE

Nothing I did or said among the other boys came to me naturally. As a result, in every encounter, even the most glancing, I had to be a performer, for at all times I was aware I was impersonating a human being.

44 
And they too will reply, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 

45
Then the King will answer, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.’ 

46
And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

HAROLD BLOOM from Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

Recently I mourned when reading the obituary of the founder of The American Flat Earth Society.

LOUISE BOGAN - “Several Voices Out of a Cloud”

Come, drunks and drug-takers; come, perverts unnerved!
Receive the laurel, given, though late, on merit; to whom
        and wherever deserved.

Parochial punks, trimmers, nice people, joiners true-blue,
Get the hell out of the way of the laurel. It is deathless
        And it isn’t for you.

JOHN KEATS - “Lines on seeing a Lock of Milton’s Hair “

Chief of organic Numbers!
Old Scholar of the Spheres!
Thy spirit never slumbers,
But rolls about our ears
For ever and for ever.
O, what a mad endeavour
Worketh he
Who, to thy sacred and ennobled hearse,
Would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse
And Melody!

How heavenward thou soundedst
Live Temple of sweet noise;
And discord unconfoundedst:
Giving delight new joys,
And Pleasure nobler pinions –
O where are thy Dominions!
Lend thine ear
To a young delian oath – aye, by thy soul,
By all that from thy mortal Lips did roll;
And by the Kernel of thine earthly Love,
Beauty, in things on earth and things above,
When every childish fashion
Has vanish’d from my rhyme
Will I grey-gone in passion
Give to an after-time
Hymning and harmony
Of thee, and of thy Words and of thy Life:
But vain is now the bruning and the strife –
Pangs are in vain – until I grow high-rife
With Old Philosophy
And mad with glimpses at futurity!

For many years my offerings must be hush’d:
When I do speak I’ll think upon this hour,
Because I feel my forehead hot and flush’d,
Even at the simplest vassal of thy Power, –
A Lock of thy bright hair!
Sudden it came,
And I was startled when I heard thy name
Coupled so unaware –
Yet, at the moment, temperate was my blood:
Methought I had beheld it from the flood.

LI BAI - “Autumn River Song”

The moon shimmers in green water.
White herons fly through the moonlight.

The young man hears a girl gathering water-chestnuts:
into the night, singing, they paddle home together.

America was never white, you racist fucks.

ANNE CARSON

“Town of the Sound of a Twig Breaking”

Their faces I thought were knives.
The way they pointed them at me.
And waited.
A hunter is someone who listens.
So hard to his prey it pulls the weapon.
Out of his hand and impales.
Itself.

SAM SHEPARD from Action

I’m getting better now. Even in the middle of all this violence.

ROBERT LOWELL - "History"

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had—
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter’s moon ascends—
a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes,
my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull’s no-nose—
O there’s a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.

EMILY DICKINSON

Those — dying then,
Knew where they went —
They went to God’s Right Hand —
That Hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found —

The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small —
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all —

RAY BRADBURY in conversation with Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke on the cosmos and the human mind

I think it’s part of the nature of man to start with romance and build to a reality. There’s hardly a scientist or an astronaut I’ve met who wasn’t beholden to some romantic before him who led him to doing something in life.

I think it’s so important to be excited about life. In order to get the facts we have to be excited to go out and get them, and there’s only one way to do that — through romance. We need this thing which makes us sit bolt upright when we are nine or ten and say, “I want to go out and devour the world, I want to do these things.”

TOM WAITS - "Warm Beer And Cold Women"

It's warm beer and cold women, no I just don't fit in
Every joint I stumbled into tonight, that's just how its been
All these double-knit strangers with gin and vermouth
And recycled stories, in the naugahyde booths
And the platinum blondes and tobacco brunettes
I'll just be drinking to forget you, I light another cigarette
And the band's playing something by Tammy Wynette
And the drinks are on me tonight

All my conversations now, I'll just be talking about you, baby
I'm boring some sailor as I try to get through
I just want him to listen now I say that's all you have to do
He said I'm better off without you, until I showed him my tattoo
And now the moon's rising, ain't no time to lose
Time to get down to drinking, tell the band to play the blues
And the drinks are on me I'll buy another round
At the last ditch attempt saloon

Warm beer and cold women, no I just don't fit in
Every joint I stumble into tonight, that's just how it's been
All these double-knit strangers with gin and vermouth
Receding hairlines, in the naugahyde booths
And the platinum blondes and tobacco brunettes
I'll just be drinking to forget you, baby, I light a menthol cigarette
And the band's playing something by Johnnie Barnette
At the last ditch attempt saloon

W. S. MERWIN - “Memorandum”

Save these words for a while because
of something they remind you of
although you cannot remember
what that is a sense that is part
dust and part the light of morning

you were about to say a name
and it is not there I forget
them too I am learning to pray
to Perdita to whom I said
nothing at the time and now she
cannot hear me as far as I
know but the day goes on looking

the names often change more slowly
than the meanings whole families
grow up in them and then are gone
into the anonymous sky
O Perdita does the hope go on
after the names are forgotten

and is the pain of the past done
when the calling has stopped and those
betrayals so long repeated
that they are taken for granted
as the shepherd does with the sheep

LI BAI - “Parting”

Green mountains rise to the north;
white water rolls past the eastern city.

Once it has been uprooted,
the tumbleweed travels forever.

Drifting clouds like a wanderer’s mind;
sunset, like the heart of your old friend.

We turn, pause, look back and wave,
Even our ponies look back and whine.

WALLACE STEVENS

“Of Mere Being”

____________________

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

[SENZA TITOLO]

Cesare Peverelli, 1955

H. L. MENCKEN in 1920

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

HAROLD PINTER

One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

Tallulah Bankhead.

DAVID McCULLOUGH

Nothing good was ever written in a large room.

ANNE CARSON - "TV Men: Lazarus"

Repetition is horrible. Poor Lazarus cannot have known
he was an
imitation Christ,
but who can doubt he realized, soon after being ripped out of his
warm little bed in the ground,

his own epoch of repetition just beginning.
Lazarus Take 2!
Poor drop.
As a bit of salt falls back down the funnel. Or maybe my pity
is misplaced. Some people think Lazarus lucky,

like Samuel Beckett who calls him ‘Happy Larry’ or Rilke
who speaks of
that moment in a game
when 'the pure too-little flips over into the empty too-much.’
Anne Carson, from “TV Men: Lazarus”

LOUISE BOGAN - "Song for the Last Act"

Now that I have your face by heart, I look 
Less at its features than its darkening frame 
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame, 
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd’s crook. 
Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show 
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read 
In the black chords upon a dulling page 
Music that is not meant for music’s cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed. 
The staves are shuttled over with a stark 
Unprinted silence. In a double dream 
I must spell out the storm, the running stream. 
The beat’s too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves; 
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps 
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW from The Quintessence of Ibsenism

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

LAURA ANDERSON

It is ten o’clock in the morning and I am already overwhelmed by the idea of today. I’m trying, I’m trying. I keep walking around on the verge of tears chanting, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay,’ and taking big breaths. My goal is to stay safely in between self-analysis and self-destruction. I just feel like I’m draining people right now. There is only so much I can ask for while giving nothing back.

I think if I wear something I like and pull my hair back and take the dogs with me, though, I will feel confident enough to go to the store and buy some orange juice.

THÍCH NHẤT HẠNH

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

HAROLD PINTER from No Man’s Land

I’m a staunch friend of the arts, particularly the art of poetry, and a guide to the young. I keep open house. Young poets come to me. They read me their verses. I comment, give them coffee, make no charge. Women are admitted, some of whom are also poets. Some are not. Some of the men are not. Most of the men are not. But with the windows open to the garden, my wife pouring long glasses of squash, with ice, on a summer evening, young voices occasionally lifted in unaccompanied ballad, young bodies lying in the dying light, my wife moving through the shadows in her long gown, what can ail? I mean who can gainsay us? What quarrel can be found with what is, au fond, a gesture towards the sustenance and preservation of art, and through art to virtue?

ANTHONY DOERR from All The Light We Cannot See

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.

SAMUEL BECKETT from Footfalls

How outwardly unmoved.

JULIAN BARNES on failure

This is not an affectation, failure is what writers do. It is built in. Your immeasurable ambition is eked out through the many thousand individual words of your novel, each one of them written and rewritten several times, and this requires you to hold your nerve for a very long period of time – or forget about holding your nerve, forget about the wide world and all that anxiety and just do it, one word after the other.

And then redo it, so it reads better. The writer’s great and sustaining love is for the language they work with every day. It may not be what gets us to the desk but it is what keeps us there and, after 20 or 30 years, this love yields habit and pleasure and necessity.

BONE MACHINE

Tom Waits