"part memory part distance remaining

mine in the ways that I learn to miss you

from what we cannot hold the stars are made"

"Who comforts you? Now that the wheel has broken,

grief is the constant. Hope: the last word spoken."

"Some days, I want to live inside the words more than my own black body. "

"who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes"

"What does it even mean to write a poem?

It means today

I'm correcting my mistakes.

It means I don't want to be lonely."

"You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.

Together we are simple green. "

"not back, let’s not come back, let’s go by the speed of

queer zest & stay up

there & get ourselves a little

moon cottage (so pretty), then start a moon garden"

"A poem is a gesture toward home.

It makes dark demands I call my own."

"Greater than the settlement

A city can pay a mother to stop crying,

And more beautiful than the new bullet

Fished from the folds of my brain"

"You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words...."

"Loneliness. Speak to me. Talk To me. Break the black silence. Speak of a tree full of leaves, Of a flying bird, the new Moon in the sunset, a poem, a book, a person--- all the Casual healing speech Of your resonant, quiet voice."

"I cannot tell how much I owe"

*the return of poem to be read from right to left *

"NDE an like feel doesnt it if and

right living aint probably you

that get dont you if and

you for aint poem this "

"Oh,

I counsel you,

leave History alone. She is exhausted,

sitting, staring into her dressing-room mirror, and wondering what rabbit, now, to pull out of what hat, and seriously considering retirement, even though the public dare not let her go "

"Ask me what my name means...

What the fuck does your name mean Linda?

Not every word needs an English equivalent in order to have significance."

[..]

"My name is the only thing I have that is unassimilated

and I’m not even sure I can call it mine."

"surely you know that mountains are--without question-- the greatest mistake mother nature made. give me one good reason to ride a rollercoaster. i dont even like mood swings."

"a butterfly lit on your hand,

Mistaking it for a flower.

You scarcely breathed in your slumber,

So dreamless it was, so deep"

[..]

"But you slept—and I let you sleep."

"As if you were on fire within

The moon lives in the lining of your skin"

"Because lives have been lost.

Because lives have been taken. "

[..]

"Because I know a woman whose hand hasn’t been shaken since she was a man."

"A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.

That is how I hold your voice."

[..]

"But whoever sees your emptiness

sees beyond the blue and the blind man."

"Or did you mean to ask

'Why are you sad so often?'

Ask the moon.

Ask what it has witnessed"

"and now I write about beautiful things like I will never touch a beautiful thing again"

[..]

"and once you know what it is to be lonely it is hard to unsee that which serves as a reminder that you were not always empty."

"Please linger

near the

door uncomfortably

instead of

just leaving.

Please forget

your scarf

in my

life and

come back

later for

it. "

"Gregory, ask me to name a thing as indestructibly beautiful as you, and I cannot. Time disfigures

those who breathe and

those of us who no longer

can but none of that has

touched you. "

"The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, i have those; they govern me."

[..]

"Because in truth I am speaking now the way you do. I speak because I am shattered. "

"you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again. "