My beard grows down to my toes, I never wears no clothes, I wraps my hair Around my bare, And down the road I goes.
A thing may fail as a poem because it tries to do what a poem cannot do: it tries to become a treatise on cosmic truth... We can best be exact about the cosmic things - God and truth, beauty, eternity and love - by not talking directly about them.
In a poem, the words happen; they just come. I let them. Otherwise, I wouldn't write. To interfere with what is happening is to distort the poem. Just a very small degree of intelligence and supervision is necessary. Very tactful. Any revision later ...
You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.
'Two Voices,' from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and 'copied it out.'
I tended to write poems about both social and spiritual problems, and some problems one doesn't really want to solve, and so the problems themselves are solved. You certainly don't want to solve problems in poems that haven't been solved in the world...
I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly n...
People are so used to reading novels now, they just read a poem straight through to get the meaning. And that's something totally different from the slow way you read something if it's a tune; which to me a poem has to be.
I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job. It's the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bi...
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility ...
In your hands The dog, the donkey, surely they know They are alive. Who would argue otherwise? But now, after years of consideration, I am getting beyond that. What about the sunflowers? What about The tulips, and the pines? Listen, all you have to d...
I can't understand how people can settle for having just one life. I remember we were in English class and we were talking about that poem by - that one guy. David Frost. 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood-' You know this poem, right? 'Two roads di...
She’s a manner of speaking. Even the flowers don’t come back, or the green leaves. There are new flowers, new green leaves. There are other beautiful days. Nothing comes back, nothing repeats itself, because everything is real.
Night doesn’t fall for my eyes But my idea of the night is that it falls for my eyes. Beyond my thinking and having any thoughts The night falls concretely And the shining of stars exists like it had weight.
Precious is sleep, better to be of stone, while the oppression and the shame still last; not seeing and not hearing, I am blest; so do not wake me, hush! keep your voice down.
He is in love with the land that is always over The next hill and the next, with the bird that is never, Caught, with the room beyond the looking glass. He likes the half-hid, the half-heard, the half-lit, The man in the fog, the road without an endi...
I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.
My love for you is everywhere. Though we're a thousand miles apart, I love you and you know it. I love you because you're different from the girls I've met before.
I have loved you with all my life, and you've agreed to be my loving wife. Now I'll forever cherish our vows in my heart,"In sickness and in health, till death do us part.
From "Blasphemy and the Core" Keep walking, though there's no place to get to. Don't try to see through the distances. That's not for human beings. Move within, but don't move the way fear makes you move.
It is to be broken. It is to be torn open. It is not to be reached and come to rest in ever. I turn against you, I break from you, I turn to you. We hurt, and are hurt, and have each other for healing. It is healing. It is never whole.
