the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

the higher you climb
the greater the pressure.

those who manage to
endure
learn
that the distance
between the
top and the
bottom
is
obscenely
great.

and those who
succeed
know
this secret:
there isn't
one.

"--you know, I've either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I've sold my house, I've found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I'm going to have a place and
the time to
create."
no baby, if you're going to create
you're going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you're going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you're on
welfare,
you're going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you're going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you're going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquakes, bombardment,
flood and fire.
baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don't create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

I should not have blamed only my father, but,
he was the first to introduce me to
raw and stupid hatred.
he was really best at it: anything and everything made him
mad-things of the slightest consequence brought his hatred quickly
to the surface
and I seemed to be the main source of his
irritation.
I did not fear him
but his rages made me ill at heart
for he was most of my world then
and it was a world of horror but I should not have blamed only
my father
for when I left that... home... I found his counterparts
everywhere: my father was only a small part of the
whole, though he was the best at hatred
I was ever to meet.
but others were very good at it too: some of the
foremen, some of the street bums, some of the women
I was to live with,
most of the women, were gifted at
hating-blaming my voice, my actions, my presence
blaming me
for what they, in retrospect, had failed
at.
I was simply the target of their discontent
and in some real sense
they blamed me
for not being able to rouse them
out of a failed past; what they didn't consider was
that I had my troubles too-most of them caused by
simply living with them.

I am a dolt of a man, easily made happy or even
stupidly happy almost without cause
and left alone I am mostly content.

but I've lived so often and so long with this hatred
that
my only freedom, my only peace is when I am away from
them, when I am anywhere else, no matter where-
some fat old waitress bringing me a cup of coffee
is in comparison
like a fresh wild wind blowing.

when Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric"

I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:

to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.

we can't cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us

it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.

You and I
breathed each other in
and now we burn on
each other tongues
like the cigarettes that
sit between your
beautiful lips.

you are
summer
fall and
winter
for me
and so i
like the
spring.

there is no such thing as a candid romance,
just words and poses to make people want what you're pretending you've got.

you reek of sulphur, you always did.
the lone match found at the start of an arson.
an insult, a dare:
the embodiment of the phrase,
"make me."

she was so queer,
and looked like my lucky clear lighter;
i could watch the fuel run down
with each cigarette and firecracker lit.

there is no romance
just different ways to start fires.

I love how i feel your whispers
at night
on my ear
sometimes they're cold like me
sometimes they're gold and
i keep them in my pajamas pocket
forever
just in case that you have to leave
and i can't never hear
your whispers again
so i come back to bed and you're sleeping
beautifully and quietly
but your words seems to want to
escape
from my pocket
so i call you once, twice
and start talking to you with
my slurred voice
and you shut me up
with a goodnight kiss
first on my forehead
and then on my lips
i couldn't taste it well
from the medication
but i can hear
you saying
goodbye, little girl
sleep well,
farewell.