Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories

The Laughing Heart your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.

I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night.

a good book can make an almost impossible existence, liveable ( from 'the luck of the word' )

It is possible to be truly mad and to still exist upon scraps of life.

I was only photographing in words the reality of it all.

how can you be true and kind at the same time? how?

sleeping in the rain helps me forget things like I am going to die and you are going to die and the cats are going to die but it's still good to stretch out and know you have arms and feet and a head, hands, all the parts, even eyes to close once more, it really helps to know these things, to know your advantages and your limitations, but why do the cats have to die, I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night.

most days go nowhere but the avoidance of pain and dissolution are lovely.

the people are the biggest horror show on earth, have been for centuries.

Don't you go to the movies?" "Mostly just to eat popcorn in the dark.

You were destroyed by what you befriended.

I could never accept life as it was, I could never gobble down all its poisons bu there were parts, tenuous magic parts open for the asking.

a life can change in a tenth of a second. or sometimes it can take 70 years.

then sit down and write or stand up and write but write no matter what the other people are doing, no matter what they will do to you.

I can see where creation often stops while the body still lives and often does not care to. the death of life before life dies.

I knew exactly what I was doing: I was doing nothing. because I knew there was nothing to do.

your best men are drunks and your worst men are locking them up, your best men are killers and your worst men are selling them bullets

I am a joke told again.

(the whole world is at the throat of the world, everybody feels angry, short-changed, cheated, everybody is despondent, disillusioned.) I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness.

being alone you decided, was a magnificent miracle. nothing else made any sense at all. —escape

anything, compared to the people, is a foundation worth searching for. anything.

shot in the eye shot in the brain shot in the ass shot like a flower in the dance amazing how death wins hands down amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of life amazing how laughter has been drowned out amazing how viciousness is such a constant I must soon declare my own war on their war I must hold to my last piece of ground I must protect the small space I have made that has allowed me life my life not their death my death not their death this place, this time, now I vow to the sun that I will laugh the good laugh once again in the perfect place of me forever. their death not my life.

gratuitous masturbation of the psyche.

I went into the men's room and stared in the mirror at my face in disgust. I looked like I knew something, but it was a lie, I was a fake and there's nothing worse in the world than when a man suddenly realizes and admits to himself that he's a phoney, after spending all his time up to then trying to convince himself that he wasn't. I stared at all the sinks and pipes and bowls and I felt like them, worse than them: I'd rather be them.

I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.

bulls strut in pinwheel glory, rockets stun the sky, but I don't know quite what to make of the dead flowers of myself, whether to dump them out of the bowl or press them between these blank pages and go on; well, all grief comes down to hard death and weeping finally ends. thank the god who made it.

the best writers have said very little and the worst, far too much.

defining the magic a good poem is like a cold beer when you need it, a good poem is a hot turkey sandwich when you’re hungry, a good poem is a gun when the mob corners you, a good poem is something that allows you to walk through the streets of death, a good poem can make death melt like hot butter, a good poem can frame agony and hang it on a wall, a good poem can let your feet touch China, a good poem can make a broken mind fly, a good poem can let you shake hands with Mozart, a good poem can let you shoot craps with the devil and win, a good poem can do almost anything, and most important a good poem knows when to stop.

the sheep in centuries past audiences at symphony concerts were not afraid to act out their displeasure at works which offended them. in our time I have either attended or listened to hundreds of concerts and never have I heard an audience express even the mildest displeasure with any work. have our musical artists improved to such an extent? or is it the decay of courage, the inability of the mass mind to reach its own decisions? not only in the world of music but in the other world? the next time you hear a symphony concert note the obedient applause, the death of the bluebird, the shading of the sun; the hooves of the horses from hell pounding on the barren ground of the human spirit.