1. i'm crazy bout that chile but she gotta go. she don't pay me no mind no mo. guess her mama was right to put her out cuz she couldn't do nothin wid her. but she been mine so long. she been my heart so long now she breakin it wid her bad habits. always runnin like a machine out of control;
I tell thee, Dick, where I have been, Where I the rarest things have seen; Oh, things without compare! Such sights again cannot be found In any place on English ground, Be it at wake, or fair.
And in a little while we broke under the strain: suppurations ad nauseam, the wanting to be taller, though it‘s simply about being mysterious, i.e., not taller, like any tree in any forest. Mute, the pancake describes you. It had tiny roman numerals embedded in its rim. It was a pancake clock. They had ’em in those days, always getting smaller, which is why they finally became extinct.
(from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth)
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
My hair is grey, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men's have grown from sudden fears: My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, For they have been a dungeon's spoil, And mine has been the fate of those
I am a great American I am almost nationalistic about it! I love America like a madness! But I am afraid to return to America I’m even afraid to go into the American Express—
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.” The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made: There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream flowed down flashing across dark rocks through its own echoes that could neither be caught nor forgotten it was the turning of autumn and already the mornings were cold with ragged clouds in the hollows long after sunrise but the pasture sagging like a roof the glassy water and flickering yellow leaves
I The evening comes, the fields are still. The tinkle of the thirsty rill, Unheard all day, ascends again; Deserted is the half-mown plain, Silent the swaths! the ringing wain, The mower's cry, the dog's alarms, All housed within the sleeping farms! The business of the day is done, The last-left haymaker is gone. And from the thyme upon the height, And from the elder-blossom white And pale dog-roses in the hedge, And from the mint-plant in the sedge, In puffs of balm the night-air blows
‘Tis true, ‘tis day, what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise because ‘tis light? Did we lie down because ‘twas night? Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither, Should in despite of light keep us together.
Light hath no tongue, but is all eye; If it could speak as well as spy, This were the worst that it could say, That being well I fain would stay, And that I loved my heart and honour so, That I would not from him, that had them, go.
New Yor I! Graveyard bristling with monuments and receptions for business purposes! Has my right hand lost its cunning? It can't remember how to spell your name: unless I scowl, my keyboard won't offer the K: it throws up I instead.
I was actually born on your streets, Lexington at 76th. So was my mother.
You might come here Sunday on a whim. Say your life broke down. The last good kiss you had was years ago. You walk these streets laid out by the insane, past hotels that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try of local drivers to accelerate their lives. Only churches are kept up. The jail turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
Bedfordshire A blue bird showing off its undercarriage En route between our oldest universities Was observed slightly off-course above Woburn In the leafy heart of our sleepiest county: Two cyclists in tandem looked up at the same moment, Like a busy footnote to its asterisk.
Since man with that inconstancy was born, To love the absent, and the present scorn Why do we deck, why do we dress For such short-lived happiness? Why do we put attraction on, Since either way ’tis we must be undone?
In cities there are tangerine briefcases on the down-platform and jet parkas on the up-platform; in the mother of cities there is equal anxiety at all terminals. West a business breast, North a morose jig, East a false escape, South steam in milk.
The centres of cities move westwards; the centre of the mother of cities has disappeared. North the great cat, East the great water, South the great fire, West the great arrow.
In cities the sons of women become fathers; in the mother of cities the daughters of men have failed to become mothers. East the uneager fingers, South the damp cave, West the chained ankle, North the rehearsed cry.
Pitiful brother—the dreadful nights I owed him! “I’ve got no real involvement in the business. I toyed with his weakness, so—it was my fault—we wound up back in exile and enslavement.”
He saw me as a loser, a weird child; he added his own prods.
I answered my satanic doctor, jeering, and made it out the window. All down a landscape crossed by unheard-of music, I spun my dreams of a nighttime wealth to come.
After that more or less healthy pastime, I’d stretch out on a pallet. And almost every night, soon as I slept, my poor brother would rise—dry mouth and bulging eyes (the way he’d dreamt himself!)—and haul me into the room, howling his stupid dream.
Truly convinced, I’d vowed to take him back to his primal state—child of the sun—and so we wandered, fed on wine from the caves and gypsy bread, me bound to find the place itself and the code.
zeus: It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and the audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don't mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you [or me for that matter] but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this.
thersites: [Running out on the construction of the stage.] The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is.
zeus: [Disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial.] Thersites is involuntary. [He puts his arm around him.] I could not play a part if I were not a player. thersites: Reveal yourself to me and don't pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play.
zeus: [Standing away.] Don't try to talk if you don't have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you.
thersites: Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. [He looks to the ground.] A parody is better than a pun.
zeus: I do not understand your language.
[They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.]
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