… “was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don’t know why you should feel
That there’s something to learn
It’s just a game that you play
Well the picture is changing
Now you’re part of a crowd
They’re laughing at something
And the music’s loud
A girl comes towards you
You once used to know
You reach out your hand
But you’re all alone, in those
Time passages
I know you’re in there, you’re just out of sight
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight”.
was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don’t know why you should feel
That there’s something to learn
It’s just a game that you play
Well the picture is changing
Now you’re part of a crowd
They’re laughing at something
And the music’s loud
A girl comes towards you
You once used to know
You reach out your hand
But you’re all alone, in those
Time passages
I know you’re in there, you’re just out of sight
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don’t know why you should feel
That there’s something to learn
It’s just a game that you play
Well the picture is changing
Now you’re part of a crowd
They’re laughing at something
And the music’s loud
A girl comes towards you
You once used to know
You reach out your hand
But you’re all alone, in those
Time passages
I know you’re in there, you’re just out of sight
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
However apparently insignificant the event, whether it be the ring of tobacco ash surrounding the table, the direction from which the wild geese first appeared, or a series of seemingly meaningless human movements, he couldn’t afford to take his eyes off it and must note it all down, since only by doing so could he hope not to vanish one day and fall a silent captive to the infernal arrangement whereby the world decomposes but is at the same time constantly in the process of self-construction.” ― Satantango
Krasznahorkai Laszlo
It was amazing, astounding, this loss of communication with the world. It was exactly as if the world had ceased, been blotted out." ~ The Scarlet Plague by Jack London
Anguish
Is it possible that She will have me forgiven for ambitions continually crushed,–
that an affluent end will make up for the ages of indigence,–
that a day of success will lull us to sleep on the shame of our fatal incompetence?
(O palms! diamond!-- Love! strength!-- higher than all joys and all fame!–
in any case, everywhere-- demon, god,-- Youth of this being: myself!)
That the accidents of scientific wonders and the movements of social brotherhood
will be cherished as the progressive restitution of our original freedom?..
But the Vampire who makes us behave orders us to enjoy ourselves
with what she leaves us, or in other words to be more amusing.
Rolled in our wounds through the wearing air and the sea;
in torments through the silence of the murderous waters and air;
in tortures that laugh in the terrible surge of their silence.
by Arthur Rimbaud
The Vampire
You who, like the stab of a knife,
Entered my plaintive heart;
You who, strong as a herd
Of demons, came, ardent and adorned,
To make your bed and your domain
Of my humiliated mind
— Infamous bitch to whom I’m bound
Like the convict to his chain,
Like the stubborn gambler to the game,
Like the drunkard to his wine,
Like the maggots to the corpse,
— Accurst, accurst be you!
I begged the swift poniard
To gain for me my liberty,
I asked perfidious poison
To give aid to my cowardice.
Alas! both poison and the knife
Contemptuously said to me:
“You do not deserve to be freed
From your accursed slavery,
Fool! — if from her domination
Our efforts could deliver you,
Your kisses would resuscitate
The cadaver of your vampire!”
Charles Baudelaire
Hymns To The Night : 1
Before all the wondrous shows of the widespread space around him, what living,
sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light – with its colors, its rays and
undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of the wakening Day? The giant-
world of the unresting constellations inhales it as the innermost soul of life, and
floats dancing in its blue flood – the sparkling, ever-tranquil stone, the
thoughtful, imbibing plant, and the wild, burning multiform beast inhales it – but
more than all, the lordly stranger with the sense-filled eyes, the swaying walk,
and the sweetly closed, melodious lips. Like a king over earthly nature, it rouses
every force to countless transformations, binds and unbinds innumerable
alliances, hangs its heavenly form around every earthly substance. – Its
presence alone reveals the marvelous splendor of the kingdoms of the world.
Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world –
sunk in a deep grave – waste and lonely is its place. In the chords of the bosom
blows a deep sadness. I am ready to sink away in drops of dew, and mingle with
the ashes. – The distances of memory, the wishes of youth, the dreams of
childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a whole long life, arise in gray
garments, like an evening vapor after the sunset. In other regions the light has
pitched its joyous tents. What if it should never return to its children, who wait
for it with the faith of innocence?
What springs up all at once so sweetly boding in my heart, and stills the soft air
of sadness? Dost thou also take a pleasure in us, dark Night? What holdest thou
under thy mantle, that with hidden power affects my soul? Precious balm drips
from thy hand out of its bundle of poppies. Thou upliftest the heavy-laden wings
of the soul. Darkly and inexpressibly are we moved – joy-startled, I see a grave
face that, tender and worshipful, inclines toward me, and, amid manifold
entangled locks, reveals the youthful loveliness of the Mother. How poor and
childish a thing seems to me now the Light – how joyous and welcome the
departure of the day – because the Night turns away from thee thy servants,
you now strew in the gulfs of space those flashing globes, to proclaim thy
omnipotence – thy return – in seasons of thy absence. More heavenly than
those glittering stars we hold the eternal eyes which the Night hath opened
within us. Farther they see than the palest of those countless hosts – needing no
aid from the light, they penetrate the depths of a loving soul – that fills a loftier
region with bliss ineffable. Glory to the queen of the world, to the great prophet
of the holier worlds, to the guardian of blissful love – she sends thee to me –
thou tenderly beloved – the gracious sun of the Night, – now am I awake – for
now am I thine and mine – thou hast made me know the Night
Novalis
It is not right that everyone should read the pages which follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands. Listen well to what I say: turn on your heels and go back, not forward,[…]
Comte de Lautréamont
At Sea
Poem By Aleister Crowley
As night hath stars, more rare than ships
In ocean, faint from pole to pole,
So all the wonder of her lips
Hints her innavigable soul.
Such lights she gives as guide my barque;
But I am swallowed in the swell
Of her heart’s ocean, sagely dark,
That holds my heaven and holds my hell.
In her I live, a mote minute
Dancing a moment in the sun:
In her I die, a sterile shoot
Of nightshade in oblivion.
In her my elf dissolves, a grain
Of salt cast careless in the sea;
My passion purifies my pain
To peace past personality.
Love of my life, God grant the years
Confirm the chrism - rose to rood!
Anointing loves, asperging tears
In sanctifying solitude!
Man is so infinitely small
In all these stars, determinate.
Maker and moulder of them all,
Man is so infinitely great!
by Aleister Crowley
“Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.”
Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist. Father Zossima, in The Brothers Karamazov, bk. 6, ch. 3, sct. H (1879-1880), trans. by David Magarshak (1958).
would you were the hollow ship
fashioned to bear the cargo of my love
the unrelenting glove
hurled in defiance at our blackest world
or that great banner mad unfurled
the poet plants upon the hill of time
or else amphora for the gold of life
liquid and naked as a virgin wife.
Yourself the prize
I gird with Fire
The Great White Ruin
Of my Desire.
I burn to gold
fierce and unerring as a conquering sword
I burn to gold
fierce and undaunted as a lion lord
seeking your Bed
and leave to them the
burning of the dead.
Harry Crosby
13 ways to look at a blackbird :
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
-Wallace Stevens
Hungarian Diva playing a gypsy wedding:
Translated : “Far is the forest, that you flew to from me”
Never be a martyr… hated in life, but loved and worshipped in death. That’s no fun… no fun, in being a Matyr, and for who’s cause?
Dostoyevsky weren’t wrong.
"might have seen, (not on a movie or television screen), but had looked where the mind flickers when I am not there to block the view. In that place, where my dreams see through a darkling glass, skins and organs put on new clothes, mind-bones structure the unfinished scaffolding of forgotten lives. Life-stories just threads in a flying carpet, a legend for a Navaho shaman to drape about his shoulders. Perhaps reincarnation is a book of dreams for insomniacs. I watch for facets in a prism, each one is cut into a hundred views, a casting of what was or could be. There are names and places, all sorts of leasing’s destined to always by-pass each other until all arrive as one in one multifaceted picture. Those faces mean nothing much until the mirror reveals your eyes watching, as if you had just walked through a door in a mega-mansion you helped build. "
Shaman poem
From here into the north, the ways are
dry. Yellow grass,
thirst in the roots. In the hearts.
It’s all simple, but false.
When I try to think history,
the enormous vertebrae
of the dinosaur behind the purple beeches
in Invalidenstrasse,
Bismarck in marble,
and Benn, a nameplate on Bolzano, lifeless.
In the depths of the bunkers
on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin
are the shoes of Hitler’s favorite horse.
Profile of power: armor and helmet.
In our pants pockets, we crumple
the banners. Full of satisfaction
we hear the flags splinter
in the fabric’s darkness.
Don’t forget the poets’ loaded dice.
When iron rules again,
we will have to console ourselves,
adorn stones with smaller stones,
the heart with water.
Joachim sartorius
To any, & every man.
Shelley,
Prometheus unbound
TS Elliot Love song for St. Sebastian
"would come in a shirt of hair
I would come with a lamp in the night
And sit at the foot of your stair;
I would flog myself until I bled,
And after hour on hour of prayer
And torture and delight
Until my blood should ring the lamp
And glisten in the light;
I should arise your neophyte
And then put out the light
To follow where you lead,
To follow where your feet are white
In the darkness toward your bed
And where your gown is white
And against your gown your braided hair.
Then you would take me in
Because I was hideous in your sight
You would take me in without shame
Because I should be dead
And when the morning came
Between your breasts should lie my head.
I would come with a towel in my hand
And bend your head beneath my knees;
Your ears curl back in a certain way
Like no one’s else in all the world.
When all the world shall melt in the sun,
Melt or freeze,
I shall remember how your ears were curled.
I should for a moment linger
And follow the curve with my finger
And your head beneath my knees—
I think that at last you would understand.
There would be nothing more to say.
You would love me because I should have strangled you
And because of my infamy;
And I should love you the more because I mangled you
And because you were no longer beautiful
To anyone but me."
“In other words, the universe itself—and the Mind behind it—is insane. Therefore someone in touch with reality is, by definition, in touch with the insane: infused by the irrational.
In essence, Fat monitored his own mind and found it defective. He then, by the use of that mind, monitored outer reality, that which is called the macrocosm. He found it defective as well. As the Hermetic philosophers stipulated, the macrocosm and the microcosm mirror each other faithfully. Fat, using a defective instrument, swept out a defective subject, and from this sweep got back the report that everything was wrong.”
Philip K. Dick, VALIS (VALIS Trilogy
Thomas Mann
Disillusionment excerpt
"It is my favourite occupation to gaze at the starry heavens at night – that being the best way to turn my eyes away from earth and from life. And perhaps it may be pardoned in me that I still cling to my distant hopes? That I dream of a freer life, where the actuality of my fondest anticipations if revealed to be without any torturing residue of disillusionment? Of a life where there are no more horizons?
"So I dream and wait for death. Ah, how well I know it already, death, that last disappointment! At my last moment I shall be saying to myself: 'So this is the great experience – well, and what of it? What is it after all?’ "
Shelley, in defense of poetry, excerpt
“The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far they were conscious of the distinction which must have subsisted in their minds”
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
a space
and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times
we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and
we will want
and
want
in that
space
2
the nut in the ref outfit
came walking down the street
talking to himself
when a hotshot in a sports car
Cut into an alley
in front of the nut
who hollered, "HEY, DOG, DRIP!
SWINE SHIT! “YOU. GOT PEANNUTS FOR BRAINS?”
the hotshot braked his sports
car , backed toward the nut,
stopped,
said: “WHATS. THAT YOU SAID,
BUDDY?”
“I said,YOU BETTER
DRIVE. OFF WHILE YOU CAN,
ASSHOKE!”
the hotshot had his girl in the
car with him and started to
open the door.
“YOU BETTER NOT GET OUT OF THAT
CAR, PEANUT BRAIN!”
the door closed and the sports car
roared
off
the nut in the red outfit then
continued to walk down the
street.
“THERE AIN’T NOTHING NOWHERE,”
he said, “AND IT’S GETTING TO BE
LESS THAN NOGHING ALL THE ALL THE
TIME”
it was a great day
There on 7th street just off
Weymouth
Drive.
Charles Bukowski