Holy shadows of the dead, I am not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad,...
There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people w...
It's a shame, when I'm at the checkout line, and the cashier holds up my bill to the light, in search for a ghost president, or slashing a yellow marker to see if counterfeit. Even in money we can't be trusted. Makes we wonder whats next, will the go...
In the land of the rejected, the field is flattened, open to much oppurtunity. Here flourish the weeds and nonstandard quality alike. No one aspires, because there is no pinnacle to reach — just be better than whoever is next to you. It is basic, f...
It was early on in 1965 when I wrote some of my first poems. I sent a poem to 'Harper's' magazine because they paid a dollar a line. I had an eighteen-line poem, and just as I was putting it into the envelope, I stopped and decided to make it a thirt...
Merciful Father.... I have squandered my days with plans of many things. This was not among them. But at this moment, I beg only, to live the next few minutes well. For all we ought to have thought and have not thought... All we ought to have said an...
You may find-out yourself in a position that you have failed all ways and means , there is no hope but hopelessness. Stop take some rest. Say bye to the thought of failures and hopelessness. Keep in mind every failure comes with a package success.The...
Fashion sighs after trends. I want timeless elegance. Fashion has no time. I do. I say: Hello Lady, how can I help you? Fashion has no time to even ask such a question, because it is constantly concerned with finding out: What will come next? It is m...
I don't look at emails, Internet or newspapers before 1 P.M. I wake at 7 A.M., eat fruit, drink tea or coffee, and read what I've achieved, or not achieved, the previous day. Then I take a shower and work on my next sentence until 1 P.M. After I've d...
Am I in the wrong place here, or in the wrong life? Did I not recognize, as I sat in a train that raced past a station and did not stop, that I was on the wrong train, and did I not learn from the conductor that the train would not stop at the next s...
So often, even when we stop to say a blessing before a meal, we’re mentally preparing to spoon some pasta or potatoes onto our plates. We’re not usually focused on the present moment, simply placing ourselves before our food and entering into the...
ceremony is essential to humans: It's a circle that we draw around important events to separate the momentous from the ordinary. And ritual is a sort of magical safety harness that guides us from one stage of our lives into the next, making sure we d...
Anyway, I think Florence and I noticed each other before the local train screeched to a halt at the 110th Street station, because as I boarded it felt as though we were supposed to step into the same car, and hold onto the same moist metal bar. My wi...
But if man genuinely produces man, it is precisely not through work and it's concrete results, not even the 'work on oneself' so widely praised in recent times, let alone through the alternatively invoked phenomena of 'interaction' or 'communication'...
He left the next morning, searching for a city with light that reminded him of me. He would mail me empty envelopes and boxes, I would take them into my closet, shut the door, and quickly open them. A flash of foreign light would fill the room, but o...
Altruism is for those who can't endure their desires. There's a world as ambiguous as a moan, a pleasure moan our earnest neighbors might think a crime. It's where we could live. I'll say I love you, Which will lead, of course, to disappointment, but...
What are you going to do to me?” “Tonight, I am going to seduce you. Next time, I am going to fuck you.” He smiles at me and pushes his back to the sofa leaving me sitting on top of him. “And why’s that?” I ask, a little bit surprised and...
Every night I pray I whisper into a megaphone, not only so God is sure to hear, but also my neighbors, because I pray to God He’ll deliver pestilence and plague to the residents next door. I even tell God the exact address, as if He can’t read my...
Hate. Huh. He'd never hated himself. If anything, he'd always liked himself a little too much. Once, a human female had even accused him of picturing his own face while he climaxed. He hadn't denied it, either, and next time he'd slept with her, he'd...
No consciousness that we would recognize as consciousness. Not awareness, as far as we can make out, of a self with a history. What I mind is what tends to come next. They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use ...
There were no milestones in the Copper Country. Often a traveler could only measure the progress of a journey by the time it took to get from each spoiled or broken thing to the next: a half-day’s walk from a dry well to the muzzle of a cannon poki...
