Black Cat Firecracker

But this was the setting for one of our murderous scenes.

This hurt, and goes on hurting:

The venomous soft jelly, the undersides.

We could stand the world if it were hard all over.

-Donald Davie

Only a fool would stare straight into the sun

Some Neanderthal or dimwit

Dazed into submission

You would think the sun,

The back-blasted icon of the universe, would be

Amicable at the very least

A beacon that was not to be fled from

That creator of life and light

Could not kill

But everything that breaths light

Burns in their own way.

Eyes..

then think of the unsatisfied ones,

with their migraine-prone temples and introverted dispositions,

loyal to a few memories

that held out little hope,

who still brought flowers,

and with a smile of not much luminosity

confided secret desires

to their small-scale heavens

that were soon to be extinguished

-Gottfried Benn

-TRANSLATED -- Michael Hofman

Its late and

I am arguing with crazy people

but midnight is useless

If I cant write about

Its indecisiveness

The way the world warps itself

Sucked straws inside out

How sounds suddenly have meaning

Because they are unexplained

Barren

The winds lifted everything but the sand.

Rocks, umbrellas, plants

Moving with the entropy of atoms

Colliding with haphazard ferocity

Fences, towers, trees

All that was settled

Slowly wretched from the earth

Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know

that the universe is ever-expanding,

inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it

acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock

only he can pass through it.

Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds

should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,

ships going down—earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run

back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come

with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,

& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point

the bridge will give, who will swim to safety

& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff

he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

-Nick Flynn

On the Possibility of Ending

As i closed the door all the desire that had not come a while before seized me. It pounded in my skull and tingled in the fingers. I threw myself on the bed and tore the pillow with my hands.

-John Fante

ghosted gusto reflected in the glass

the holy dribble of man

sharptoothed with intent

roaring his senses to the trees

their atoms recoiling in

primal recognition

the very cells

reorganizing