"Please don't be pretentious tonight"

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical nakedd/ dragging themselves through negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,/...who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war..."








"ACCIDENT: Always 'regrettable' or 'unfortunate' (as if a mishap could ever be a cause for rejoicing)."













"Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter."











"They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures."










Like the train's beat
Swift language flutters to the lips
Of the Polish airgirl in the corner seat.
The swinging and narrowing sun
Lights her eyelashes, shapes
Her sharp vivacity of bone.
Hair, wild and controlled, runs back
And gestures like these English oaks
Flash past the windows of her foreign talk.

The train runs on through wilderness
Of cities. Still the hammered miles
Diversify behind her face.
And all humanity of interest
Before her angled beauty falls,
As whorling notes are pressed
In a bird's throat, issuing meaningless
Through written skies; a voice
Watering a stony place