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they are terrified they touch life is too much
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delighted in the delighting i love you in mid-air i love myself the ground
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the great wings sing nothing lightly lightly fall
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solid the white walls rising up out of the sea the pillared crown of the temple
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the sky is full of children with wild eyes and huge faces falling to the ground
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it's been only me and the two telephones the one on the wall in the kitchen and the extension in the darkened guest room upstairs
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i turn my back and everyone i command sees what it can be to be commanded
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phantom limbs spring is a verb a wish is a wash a walking stick is a gottdam wing
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he blinked then offered as postscript to his lecture a promise so splendid it made me give up math more thingth like that will happen in thith clath
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i leave my love with you i leave my love with you in this strange city
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cursed be he that confirmeth not the words of this law to do them and all the people shall say amen
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we have set out to live and die into the interstices of a new nowhere to be or be returning to
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flights which they will be obliged to take later
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there was terror already in her love even before she knew for sure her lover was the god
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that the world can hear the sharp shout which wakes the cat her claws one inch from the rabbit's bobbing scut
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down the rising of sea or mountain slope: except we do not finally put it down: still till the host appears we'll make the masters here
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market this morning: will bankruptcy make a go of it: will the leavings be left only: the wave turns over and does not rise again that wave
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gulf shrimp a thousand names of softboiled lipsticks fritter english as if it were french meaning meeting no resistance from the flesh
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accommodate the action in your life she said to aeronautical exhausts of every plane and cab i ever caught
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that was the one i chose and teachers would turn in their practiced hands to see whence the sad notes came
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amp begs for alms his face horse rudder red a son he huffs it is a son i want i spit into them corned mitt hands
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lamp-drawn moths before the six-limbed elders arrive as one mind as shifting soil to polish what's left forsaking only the inedible brain
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come slow and look me again in the eyes as you do
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and it is always your fault: not enough planning the wrong color passport the misplaced stress in a word
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as each child crawls out their gutted hole amp rebuild each dead town we can never rest
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you go in the door the pot lies upside down in the hearth it sprawls with hostile black feet
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through her in a rush of musk and saffron beauty falls into disarray
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the last drop of the fluid soul before evaporation
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when rain inspires the night birds to create rhyme and formal verse stanzas can be made between abstract expression and first light
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her heartbeat is a metaphor a late bloom of red flowers that refuse to fade my darling turns to poetry at night
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he stumped up but crime befell kismet pardon repelled mores coin begat loss
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of your mouth perfect as light and the tree bends and stands upright in the stolid night
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is the history of currents: a canal small enough to catch a childhood in its net water vast enough to divide a life
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can you show me how to wish how to gather and scatter this single hooped breath
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graceless creatures that we are unmake and befoul our beds don't tell me deluge don't tell me heat too damned much heat
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catalogue's tissuelike pages like his skin all milliner-ribboned yet with barely hooded things as they are and will be visible beneath it
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the ants march on in rows they're off to do who knows what harm to the ripe pears
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where ancient glass trembles facets of dark open to tumble out king revenge-tragedy triumphal colors of god
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no one can know what is between me and god
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what you want nobody or nothing fills our short journeying
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before death charged his first fare we wake and hurry to slip our moorings the ferry's there
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tonight let go the snow
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methuselahs the nurses wash and dress without haste none needed
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then breathe what's left back to the world speak the coyote's tongue sweat the nitro from your blood say you love what you've become
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i see your hair which i call red i lie here in this bed
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even the earth claims color once a year dressed in red leaves as the trees play grieving
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the way the sun dissolves the snow's crust the way in the wind that stirred the light leaves the oracle that the sibyl wrote was lost
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things from me along my fingertips bare shoots of days then years unfurl in the cold air
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a small moon that's been hidden under my pillow that's been changing the way my body moves this whole time
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like the woman the magician levitates over the table her body floating an unlikely inch or two above the velvet-draped plateau
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red rocks blood clots bearing boys blood sands swimming being from women's hands we originate originally spontaneous as hemorrhage
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could be cousins left on the land bridge contrary to popular belief that was a two-way toll in any case we'd claim them give them some place to stay
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at the skinning knives i think i'll call this mercy too
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a kite tugging on its string gives you a sense of what's up there though it is translated and by a string out there in the dark the true thing
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a letter on thin blue paper someone is putting down the needle onto a spinning record just so
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of the self to arrive at some essential plane where poems were supposed to succeed i was wrong
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this is the house i was born in look at it asylum
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warden says every man gotta pay his way on parchman farm same as the outside
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it's that you're beginning to wash off me like ashes in holy water
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now jennifer had middle mother issues everything can be illuminated by water or most things
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mothers of lost habitats mothers of fallout mothers of extinction pray for us because even tomorrow will be haunted leave them leave us leave
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could this be it a friend wrote her last words last lost it for all our earth
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some of us are like trees that grow with a spiral grain as if prepared for the path of the spirit's journey to the world of all souls
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it is not an easy path a dog stands at the opening constellation past the great helping hand
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the dog wants to know did you ever harm an animal hurt any creature did you take a life you didn't eat
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it is a world that can't be imagined by ordinary means after this first one the next could be a map of forever
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from between stars are the words we now refuse loneliness longing whatever suffering might follow your life into the sky
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once those are gone the life you had against your own will the hope even the prayers take you one more bend around the river of sky
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vote red we soon dead
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and now we ask: will you stay long and will we go on reaching our hands toward you london december
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carcass beside spirit o come to my hand unkillable whatever continues continue to approach
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the count of cappuccino the marquise of meringue all the little cantuccini
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no meaning to life can be found in this holy language nor beyond the lyrical fabricator's inescapable theme be found the loathed find there is nothing to find
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delineate my entire stratagem must i settle into phantomness and not say i understand things better than god
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my soul disclaims the kindred of her earth and made for empire whispers me within desire of greatness is a god-like sin
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the words in my dream: actuarial file actuary a registrar or notary who keeps records of the acts of a court
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everything that happens happens once and for all is this true if so what then
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and the ones who come after us maybe they can understand us forgive us as we do forgive our parents our grandparents moving so distantly through their lives
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of chemical incentives combinations of which can pretty much answer for most of our habits and for our affections
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o go home brother go home the devil's back again and magic hell is swallowing flies
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to the piano of ragtime music paul newman plunges his head into a basin of ice and water
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a consummate conman with robert redford he's up and ready to take on the mafia the sting is on
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but to them it's jazz it's all cool for jazz makes them look cool
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as for ragtime just a last minute anachronistic improvisation for good cinema's sake
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wishing to be to act to live he must ask first in other words to actually exist
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the garage man returns and puts the change in my hand counting the singles carefully
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bright autumn moon pond snails crying in the saucepan
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the world rises and falls each day through the eyes of a fish
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he held her like a saxophone when she was his girl her tongue trembling at the reed
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jerusalem's repose shall make amends for time this letter wastes thy time and mine till when once more thy pardon and farewell
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at length erasmus that great injur'd name stemm'd the wild torrent of a barb'rous age and drove those holy vandals off the stage
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see and confess one comfort still must rise 'tis this: though man's a fool yet god is wise
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how much less those much higher in degree and so much fairer and much more than these as these are fairer than the land and seas
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my body laid out on a marble slab naked but for a linen sheet tucked under its chin as though to keep the patient warm
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a solemn band approached identified the late departed with what looked like mingled relief mild satisfaction and bereavement
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sensing its mute but anchored trust that parts lucky for others would befriend as well oh love even the heir that flesh once named
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even the wolves holding resonant conversations in their forests thickened with legend
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in this country the animals have the faces of animals
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their eyes flash once in car headlights and are gone
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a girl is running don't tell me she's running for her bus
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